Applied Tennis Coaching: Integrating Practice, Coach Development, and Elite Performance

Tennis coaching is increasingly understood as a dynamic, interconnected field where effective practice, ongoing coach development, and high‑performance delivery cannot be considered in isolation. Rather, coaching expertise emerges through the continuous interaction between how learning environments are designed, how coaches acquire and refine professional knowledge, and how this knowledge is enacted under competitive pressure. Recent studies highlight the growing sophistication of representative learning design, tactical periodisation, and decision‑making models, while also emphasising the social and contextual nature of coach learning. Yet, much of this work remains fragmented across sub‑domains, with limited research exploring how these dimensions interact in practice. There is a clear need for integrated, applied insights that inform both developmental and elite tennis contexts.

This Research Topic aims to advance an integrated understanding of applied tennis coaching, focusing on the interplay between practice design, coach learning, and high‑performance delivery. It seeks to encourage contributions that explore how coaching knowledge is developed, enacted, and refined in real environments, and how coaches translate evidence and experience into effective performance systems. The goal is to connect research and practice, fostering a dialogue that supports coaches in designing representative, adaptive, and contextually relevant frameworks for both player and coach development.

To gather further insights into the integrated nature of applied tennis coaching, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

-Integrated practice design: representative learning design, constraints‑led approaches, tactical periodisation, and decision‑making development.

-Coach development and learning: professional judgement and decision‑making, mentoring, reflective practice, supervision models, and longitudinal learning.

-Elite coaching and performance systems: high‑performance environments, multidisciplinary collaboration, season planning, and performance behaviours under competitive pressure.

-Player development pathways: transitions, maturation, dual careers, and long‑term athlete development.

-Technology and innovation: applied uses of video, wearables, data analytics, and AI to support coaching and performance.

-Case studies and practice narratives: in‑situ accounts of coaching interventions, season‑long programmes, or integrated support team collaborations.

Article types: We welcome a wide range of contributions, including Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Mini Review, Brief Research Report, Conceptual Analysis, Hypothesis and Theory, Perspective, and Opinion articles.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Tennis coaching, Practice design, Coach development, Representative learning design, High-performance environments, Decision-making, Tactical periodisation, Constraints-led approach, Player development pathways, Performance systems

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.