Written by: Larry Jurovich

Larry is recognized world wide as a leader in Player, Program, and Coach development. He has developed players that have competed in every Grand Slam, represented their country in Davis Cup and Fed Cup, and have won over 40 nation championships. He has designed the curriculum for the highest level of coach education in Canada and the U.K. and trained their national coaches. He worked as a National Coach for Tennis China in the lead up to the London Olympics.

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Thank you for sending all the encouragements to everyone during this challenging time. I have always believed in the simple concept that “leaders lead” and it is heartening to see evidence of how many strong leaders we have in Canadian tennis.

My coaching team does a lot of book studies and many of the books lean towards the subject of character. It seems an accepted truth among the people that study character that it is only developed in times of adversity. Let’s embrace this as a time for the character of civilization as a whole to deepen. I am hearing and seeing a lot of “the world has changed” talk. Let’s resolve to make this a change for the better.

For me personally this has been the hardest day of my professional life today. Having to close the centres and understand the hardship my team will face is almost too much to bare. As many of you have already stated we need to, and I am trying to, find a way to make the most positive result out of this situation. I am working hard with my team to ensure the least possible negative effect on them or our players during this time. I appreciate the ideas already shared and will participate in them wholeheartedly.

On a more personal note when I decided about 7 years ago to build these centres, Hatem gave me the very good advice to concentrate all my efforts here as I was spread pretty thin with all of my contracts. To that end I have really withdrawn to a large extent from the larger tennis community. It has worked in that the centres have exceeded all expectations and we have been able to do our small part for the fabric of tennis in Canada. At this time with our centres closing, hopefully for the very short term, it occurs to me something I read years ago. The only true scarce resource is time. As we are going through this I know I will have more time on my hands then I have for the last number of years. I would like to offer this time to Canadian tennis. I do not have any delusions of self importance, but I would like to humbly offer my free time to all of you. As most of you know I used to work extensively in Coach Education and have a strong understanding of Louis’s work and what made Canadian coach education the international leaders for years. As long as we are closed I am going to put together some small coach ed videos. The video will be very low quality but hopefully the content will be decent. I am going to use this time to try and help the new generation of Canadian coaches have access to the groundbreaking work Louis started a generation ago.

I am not sure how I will deliver this content to you but if you want it let me know. If you or your team has any specific topics you would like covered please send them on to me and as long as I have this time available to me I will do my best to build these resources.

Thanks for caring so much for the tennis community

Larry