Managing Jr Players vs Simply Coaching Them with Tenicity's Harsh Mankad

Summary

Harsh Mankad, founder of Tenicity (a player development platform) and former ATP professional from India who played college tennis at the University of Minnesota, presents a framework distinguishing coaching (isolated on-court instruction) from player development management (a continuous assessment-training-evaluation cycle). He also provides a first-hand account of the USTA Lake Nona facility and the Tennis Industry Association conference in Orlando, including USTA’s announcement of Brian Boland replacing Jay Berger as head of men’s player development.

Guest Background

Harsh Mankad is a former ATP professional from India whose mother was India’s #1 women’s tennis player. He played collegiate tennis at the University of Minnesota (his name is on the wall at the indoor courts) and competed professionally, including with doubles partner Krat Huey (now top-25 in the world in doubles). He founded Tenicity, a player development platform that uses technology to support coaches in creating systematic development plans, and travels extensively presenting at industry events including the TIA Annual Conference.

Key Findings

• Player development is a circle, not a series of isolated sessions. Mankad’s framework: the development loop starts with game assessment (where is the player today, what are their strengths and opportunities), flows into customized training, then into evaluation of progress, then into learning from matches, which feeds back into the next assessment. Coaches who don’t connect these stages are coaching, not developing.
• USTA Lake Nona confirmed as a 65-acre, 100-court campus with multi-surface design. Mankad provides first-hand description: red clay courts for French Open prep, Australian Open surface indoors, US Open surface outdoors, dedicated high-performance training facilities, and a clubhouse section for college and recreational matches with clay courts and social space. He calls it a model for the rest of the world.
• Brian Boland (UVA) replacing Jay Berger as USTA head of men’s player development is announced during the episode. Mankad welcomes the transition: Boland’s record at Virginia (Somme de Varman reaching top 100, Krat Huey top-25 in doubles) demonstrates that college coaches can develop professionals. The appointment bridges the college-to-pro pipeline institutionally.
• Tennis industry at an innovation inflection point. The TIA conference theme was innovation: wearable devices, automation software for tennis programs, new formats (Pop Tennis, pickleball adjacents), and platforms like Tenicity. USTA’s president explicitly invited innovators to Lake Nona to test their products — a signal of institutional openness to external innovation.
• Parents should ask coaching programs for measurable development outcomes. Mankad draws from a TIA conference speaker who argued tennis programs should learn from fitness (which produces measurable, short-term outcome goals). Programs that can state what skills they’ll develop in 6-8 weeks with measurable outcomes are operating at a higher methodological standard.

Actionable Advice for Families

1. Ask your child’s coach to describe their development methodology — specifically the assessment, training, evaluation, and learning cycle they use. If they describe isolated lesson content rather than a developmental system, that’s diagnostic.
2. Request a 6-8 week development plan with specific, measurable objectives. Coaches who can’t produce one aren’t operating with a development methodology.
3. If you’re a tennis director or coach, explore the Tenicity platform as a systematic player development tool.
4. Follow the USTA’s Lake Nona events calendar — the campus hosts college matches, combines, and professional training camps that provide visibility opportunities for serious players.

INTENNSE Relevance

• “Coaching vs. player development management” is the exact distinction INTENNSE’s coaching staff should internalize. A mic’d coach delivering isolated tactical instructions is coaching. An INTENNSE coach who tracks each player’s development arc across the season and uses in-arc communications to advance that arc is managing development.
• Brian Boland’s appointment is directly relevant to INTENNSE’s USTA network-building. Boland is now the head of USTA men’s player development — an institutional relationship INTENNSE should cultivate as the league develops its college-to-professional pipeline role.
• Tenicity as a potential INTENNSE technology partnership. A player development platform built by a former ATP professional from an Indian background (international player development expertise) that helps coaches create systematic development plans has direct application to INTENNSE’s coaching operations. Mankad’s network and the platform’s capabilities are worth exploring.
• USTA’s openness to innovation at Lake Nona — “come here with a new idea and we’ll test it” — is an explicit invitation that INTENNSE should take seriously. Piloting team tennis at the Lake Nona facility or partnering with USTA on a post-collegiate competitive pilot would create institutional credibility.

Notable Quotes

“Player development is about taking a player from where they are today to where you want to take them tomorrow. That’s much bigger than coaching on the court for one hour. Those are isolated events. Development connects them.”

“Virginia has a great track record — Somme de Varman reached the top 100, Krat Huey is top 25 in doubles. To have a leader like Brian Boland step into player development — I think it’s going to be phenomenal for US tennis.”