Learning How to Play Tennis: The Cost of Group and Private Tennis Lessons

Finding high quality tennis lesson programs is not always straight forward. While there might be lessons labelled for advanced and beginning players, not all of these coaches are adequately qualified to be teaching these different levels of players how to play tennis. Most coaches will have some kind of experience in actually playing tennis, but this still doesn't guarantee their ability to teach. Your best bet to discovering a quality program is through first-hand research. People looking for tennis lessons may feel they can't effectively judge the abilities of a teaching professional, but there are some basic ways you can assess the general quality of tennis lessons.

You should expect group tennis lessons to cost anywhere from $10 to $30 per lesson. A single lesson with a group will generally run longer than an hour because it takes more time to properly give instruction to more players. A normal group instruction will last around an hour and a half to two hours. Private lessons will be shorter, usually an hour, and much more expensive as well. The typical private lesson costs around $40 an hour, but depending on the particular coach this can be much higher or lower.

A common complaint about tennis is the high cost of private lessons. While it is true that some teaching professionals have absurdly high prices, this is not always the case. Lesson pricing is very often broken down according to how many people are involved in the lesson. This means that if you can find a group of players, you will be able to split the cost of a single session among yourselves. These kinds of lessons are very effective for beginning players because they are able to get just the right amount of attention from the coach. Too much instruction early on in tennis development can make the sport seem overly complicated while taking a lot of fun out of learning how to play tennis.

How do you find out if your tennis coach is really qualified to be teaching you about different grips and strokes? You should always check and make sure a teaching professional has some proof that he has attended courses about teaching tennis. The USPTA certification is very common in the United States as a requirement for any teaching pro. If your prospective coach does not have this certification you should ask why and possibly consider looking for another coach. Having this specific qualification does not cover all forms of teaching tennis though. Be prepared to also ask what a coach's specialization is and if they are qualified to teach the type of lessons that you are seeking.

Players looking for lessons and trying to assess the value they get for a certain price have trouble determining what they are paying for. Someone who is just learning how to play tennis may not be able to really gauge a coach's level of teaching ability in any effective measure. There is no easy way to assess precisely how good someone is at teaching, but you can apply a few different checks to make sure they at least know how to run a quality program.

• Class size is the single biggest indicator of a lesson's quality. Some coaches might be able to fit as many as 8 players into a single group lesson, but usually there shouldn't be more than 4.
• Long lines of students sitting around idle is a telling sign of poor lesson structure. A coach should have a plan of how the lesson should go and it can't include students sitting around all the time.
• Lessons need to have some element of fun in them. There can be serious and competitive drills, but unless a tennis lesson is fun the student is going to have little to no desire to come back.