At a recent tournament, my daughter’s opponent’s mother approached me to enquire about her tennis experience.

After a brief introduction, she asked me the question that I honestly dislike answering:
“How long has your daughter been playing tennis?”

The reason I dread this question is that I consider it to be irrelevant…

Take, for example, two kids who both have been playing tennis for 2 years. One of them practices almost every day while the other one does only once a week.
That makes it obvious that the one who practices more often is the better player, even though they both have been playing tennis for… 2 years.

As a tennis player or tennis parent, you probably have encountered people who asked you this same question – how do you feel about answering it?

I make sure that when somebody asks me this, I’ll tell them the story I just described above. (:

And by the way, in my opinion, the right question to ask is: “How passionate is your son/daughter about tennis?”