The last week of June my wife and I attended our second year at Cleveland's House. Cleve's is a great family resort in the Muskoka Lakes area, offers all-inclusive packages for a comfortable stay, great food and plenty of activities. There are also 16 hardcourts on the property and this particular week they offer their "tennis bootcamp" where head pro Hugh Smith brings in additional guest pros to conduct extensive group instruction, drills and round robins. For six full days, we spent anywhere from 4-6 hours on the court. It's the best warm-up for the summer tennis season you can get and I highly recommend it. There were players attending at all levels. Our schedule for a typical day was something like:
- 8:00 am - rise & shine
- 9:00 am - buffet breakfast
- 10:00 am - hit the courts for drills and skills development
- Noon - break for hot tub, get ready for lunch inside or on the patio
- 2:00 pm - hit the courts for more drills and practice
- 3:15 pm - stick around for two sessions of organized round robins
- 4:30 pm - pool or hot tub break before dinner
Cleves is an associate member of the OTA and is providing special discounts for their various vacation packages. Special thanks to resident pros Hugh and Maddy along with guest pros Gary, Max, Lorent and Andrew for putting on a great tennis workout week!
Pros L-R: Maddy, Gary, Hugh, Lorent, Max, Andrew
Boot Camp Team with Pros
Visiting Roger Martin
I was fortunate enough to get some time with the Chair of Tennis Canada, Roger Martin, in early July. Roger is also Dean of the Rotman School of Management at U of T and has written and lectured extensively on strategy, integrative thinking and productivity. We spent some time discussing how the competitive tennis landscape in Canada has changed (for the better) over the last eight or more years. One of Roger's biggest contribution to tennis in Canada during his tenure as chair has been his ability to apply his strategic expertise to refocus Tennis Canada and ensure the development budget has increased from $2M eight years ago up to $12M for this year. Producing top players takes investment and time with proper coaching and training, and it would appear TC is starting to see this investement pay off, first with Milos Raonic, and now recently with big wins at Wimbledon for Filip Peliwo (ranked #1) and Eugenie Bouchard (ranked #2). All three are direct products of the National Training Centre in Montreal. Let's hope this trend continues and those players in the spotlight now are just the tip of the iceberg for better things to come.
And of course I would be remise if I didn't credit the wonderful work of the OTA and the other provinces in providing a feeder system for TC. OTA provides by far the largest number of sanctioned events of any province combined with an outstanding schools tennis program and club support system. All these components ensure as many kids as possible have access to the sport from an early age, which increases the probability that a select few will take their skill to the professional level.
