Coach John Carpenter grew up in East St. Louis dreaming of playing tennis like an older teen he watched play on the corner of 64th Street, Jimmy Connors. For years, John wondered why he did not excel as a tennis teacher despite teaching the methods of the recognized experts. He studied Bill Tilden, Vic Braden, John Yandell, and anyone who was acclaimed. It never occurred to him that the “experts” might not be teaching optimal methods to beginners.

In 2003, a 5.0 player saw John’s frustration with a student, then handed him a set of videos that he claimed Venus and Serena Williams used to develop their game. After testing the contrarian methods on those videos, John knew he could coach full-time for the rest of his life since his students quickly improved while learning to play like pros in form and style.

 In the spring of 2004, the coach who made the “revolutionary” teaching videos, internationally renowned Coach Oscar Wegner, after watching John teach beginners, invited John to join him in Wegner’s crusade to simplify and reform tennis instruction. John was Oscar’s “Dr. Watson” for 12 years. Oscar’s worldwide following allowed John access to many famous coaches around the world.

 When John couldn’t find a timeline of how coaches taught in history, the book Modern Tennis instruction:  A Historical Guide to Play Your Best Tennis was conceived. The book documents who was teaching what and when in tennis’ first 150 years.

 Speaking with over 1000 coaches all over the world through cyberspace and in person, (Braden, Lansdorp, Machar Reid, Martin Baroch, Gavin McMillan, Dimitri Tursonov, Rick Macci, and countless others) John found one coach who appeared to have solved the most challenging concept in the history of tennis instruction:  how to hit the rising ball. Coach Chuck Tomlin of Atlanta, with John’s help, built out the Congruent Model of Tennis that is now becoming acknowledged as the gold standard of tennis instruction.  It does not claim that anyone was right or wrong, just that there is a higher resolution. ‍ ‍