Clay Court Experience for Young NZ Juniors

National Coach Marcel Vos (pictured below) updates us on the New Zealand Junior Holland Tour:

I have spent the last two weeks working with our juniors helping them fit into their new environment here in Amsterdam. It is already obvious that this will be a great learning experience for our juniors during their three month journey.

The experience is providing the players with the opportunity to train and work on their game on the clay before playing in three ITF junior events in July. The overall goal is to develop their game amongst an inspirational environment whilst providing the players with an impression on the necessary work ethic and discipline it takes to be a professional player.
In Holland their is a range of players of all levels from many different countries, our players are in great hands and are getting private lessons on top of their group trainings, the program is very well rounded. The support crew is fantastic with Michiel Schapers (former Pro top 30) Dutch national coach and Davis Cup Captain, Sven Groenevled a world renowned coach and the head of the Adidas player development having worked with many stars. The physical traniners are very experienced and have been busy running tests on the players and creating personalised programs for each individual which will commence next week.  They have also been enriched with a 'mental' workshop with Author of the book 'Mindset' Jackie Reardon to work on the mental side of the game which is considered to be highly undertrained. Jackie will be off to South Africa now to work with the Bulls Super Rugby team, so it is great to see that it is not only tennis players she works with! Check out some of her work here www.themindset.eu   

I have to give our juniors a lot of credit, taking all the above on board as it takes guts and can be a bit scary looking in the mirror sometimes and having an honest look at yourself. If they can continue to work on these things from now on their improvement will be assured. It will be interesting to see how the players will get through and mature over the next few months and learn from playing on clay courts. It is certainly a great surface to work on all fassets of their game and as 50% of all professional tournaments are played on clay nowadays, it is essential to learn to play on it.
Even though there will be many challenges ahead for them, i can see already lots of changes and improvements in them. It is all up to them now to make the most of this opportunity and we will be following them closely.