Bill Patton

Summary

Bill Patton, a Northern California coach and co-founder of USA Tennis Coach LLC with partner Sterling Struther, discusses the emergence of online tennis instruction, how coaches should integrate it into their teaching practice, and his philosophy of athlete-centered coaching. He describes two specific course offerings — a net-play development course and a two-handed backhand style identification system — that illustrate his practical, research-backed approach to teaching differentiated technique to varied learning profiles.

Guest Background

Bill Patton is a USPTA Elite, PTR, and MTM certified professional coaching in Northern California. Together with Sterling Struther, he co-founded USA Tennis Coach LLC, a platform focused on training, certifying, and mentoring high school tennis coaches. His courses are featured on CoachTube.com and emphasize scalable coaching frameworks that coaches can adapt to their own contexts.

Key Findings

• Online tennis instruction should be a coaching collaboration tool, not a competitor. Patton reframes the coach’s relationship to online content: when a player brings a YouTube video to a lesson, the correct response is affirmation (“you went out of your way to learn”) rather than defensiveness. Engaging with the content the player sourced deepens trust and allows for a jointly evaluated learning experience.
• Four distinct two-handed backhand styles exist within USPTA parameters. Through 2.5 years of experimentation, Patton identified four biomechanically distinct two-handed backhand styles (not just the dominant “hit it like a left-handed forehand” model). He found that style is approximately equally distributed — meaning coaches who teach only one style are mismatch-coaching 70-75% of their students.
• Technique discovery vs. technique prescription. His backhand style methodology is built around discovery: “which of these four approaches produces the magical crushed shot for this player?” rather than forcing a prescribed style. He describes filming a first session with four players who’d never worked with him — each hit their style correctly and each produced a distinctly powerful shot.
• Net play course addresses a tactical gap. His 50-minute “Get to the Net” course cites IBM data from the 2015 US Open: 63% of points were won when players attacked the opposing player’s backhand at the net. Despite this, coaches rarely develop net-play skills systematically. The course provides a progressive framework from regressing to basic net skills through full net-play competence.
• Athlete-centered coaching as the organizing principle. Patton and Struther’s philosophy: the coach’s job is to create conditions for the athlete to discover their own optimal style, not to install the coach’s preferred technique. This produces joy in players (they’ve made a discovery) and builds genuine technical ownership.

Actionable Advice for Families

1. Encourage your child to research tennis technique online — it signals intellectual engagement with the game and creates material for productive coach conversations.
2. Ask your child’s coach: “How many backhand styles do you teach?” A coach who teaches one is mismatch-coaching players who don’t fit that style.
3. If your child isn’t enjoying technical practice, it may be a style mismatch — the technique doesn’t fit their body, not that they lack talent.
4. Look for CoachTube courses by Patton and Struther as supplemental material that coaches and players can explore together.

INTENNSE Relevance

• “Four backhand styles” insight has direct application to INTENNSE’s coaching staff development. Players at the professional tier have established styles; coaches who try to prescribe technique over developing within the player’s natural style create regression, not improvement.
• Athlete-centered coaching is the philosophical standard INTENNSE’s mic’d coaches should operate from. In-ear coaching during play should be discovery-oriented (“what did you notice about their serve pattern?”) rather than prescriptive (“hit more topspin”).
• Net play as a trainable tactical specialty is relevant to INTENNSE’s format. The compressed scoring in 10-minute arcs puts premium value on efficient point-building. Players with strong net games are disproportionately effective.
• USA Tennis Coach LLC’s work with high school coaches represents an interesting INTENNSE adjacency — high school coaches are part of the pipeline that identifies and develops future INTENNSE players, and Patton’s network could be a referral channel.

Notable Quotes

“People go for dessert. They want the footwork drill, the forehand technique video. Nobody watches the foundational coaching philosophy course. But you can’t build a house without a foundation.”

“The minute a player says ‘that’s my shot’ — when they discover their style, not when I tell them what it is — the whole dynamic changes. They own it. They’ll fight for it.”