Fall is the busiest time of the year at the Palisades Tennis Center, especially with the fall sessions beginning on Labor Day. Palisadian-Post Sports Editor Steve Galluzzo caught up with PTC Head Pro Jon Neeter for the important information and changes from previous years: PP: What are the hardest workouts to get in? JN: The after-school workouts for kids always fill up extremely fast. Some are already filled up now. Cannot recommend highly enough that interested people get into the tennis center ASAP. We have moved a lot of times around, especially for beginners to give more times on more days. The evening adult workouts are just short of going to lottery. They start at 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. depending on the night. Certain weekday morning’s workouts like the ones taught by Jamie always fill fast. We added a lot of stuff on the weekends as well and I don’t know how quickly those will fill. PP: Are you more of an elite junior academy or a beginner level tennis center? JN: Ironically, the program has developed tons of great players, probably more than any tennis center in the country, but still our main focus is the base of the pyramid. Our mandate is to get tons of kids out hitting balls, learning tennis and acquiring a lifetime activity. The fact that our kids turn into college and pro players is gravy. PP: When is the best time to start a kid in tennis? JN: You are going to laugh at this answer, but 18 months is probably the best time to start a kid playing tennis. It is amazing how quickly they pick up basic rudimentary striking skills. Our Mommy/Daddy and Me classes are the ones that experience the least attrition. We have kids that started in Mommy and Me who are now playing college tennis. PP: When should people take private lessons? JN: We are very aggressive about getting people in workouts as opposed to private lessons. Playing matches and playing in programming are the two biggest components of building a tennis player. When you are doing it with 20 other kids, you are doing it for the tennis, the comraderie and the fun. When you do it by yourself, the percentage chance on being a lifelong tennis player plummets. PP: What is new this year? JN: Shortly you will see massive changes to our website (www.palitenniscenter.com ). There will be a ton of schedules, stats and player bios on there. The programming at the park is great and we aren’t really looking for too many ways to change that formula.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
