Tennis And “The Ugly Parent Syndrome”

There’s a syndrome in tennis circles that has come to be known as”The Ugly Parent Syndrome.”

It is one in which teenaged players, as well as people within their pre-teens, are placed under pressure by over-zealous parents decided to see that their children scale the peaks of tennis sin.

The pressure these parents exert can arrive in many forms — from subtle mental methods that play one child off against another (“How come Johnny’s forehand is far better compared to yours? — Do not you believe you should practise more often?”) To threatening a young child with a reduction of some worth if he doesn’t perform (“Forget about that new racquet if you don’t conquer Johnny”).

It may involve becoming deaf to their kid’s worries if those issues conflict with what the parent has decided to be in the child’s”best interests”. (“I know you’d rather spend some more time with your buddies, but that I know what is best, and what is best is that you just spend just two hours practising forehands.”)

And in some cases, the pressure may even take the kind of physical abuse.

On an global scale, the most (in)famous”dreadful parent” of all is Jim Pierce, whose daughter, Mary, was for quite a few years among the game’s leading women players.

Jim Pierce’s behaviour became so threatening to his daughter that she took out restraining orders to guard herself from him and hired bodyguards.

In 1993, he was banned by the Women’s Tennis Organization from championships, although that ban has been lifted.

There have been numerous recorded cases of what can only be described as child abuse to aging and the destruction of this parent/child relationship.

Bearing in mind it is those cases in which the child reaches an global level of play that any publicity is brought to bear within an abusive parent, think about how much of this sort of thing goes on at the reduced levels.

While I examine a few of the tennis parents now — in contrast to 20 or 25 years ago, when most parents were able to draw out the distinction between a reassuring influence and an abysmal, constraining one — I still can’t help but watch the same sort of Bad obsession with their kid’s functionality that characterises the notorious of tennis’ nasty parents.

Forgetting that the absolute most important thing for a child will be a love of their game, these parents guarantee that their child’s engagement with the game will soon be short-lived.

As anybody who has competed at a high level of game knows, there is nothing worse than having to manage the extra burden of unwanted pressure, particularly by a parent (or trainer ) who has zero understanding of what the game is about — but who believes they do.

Living vicariously through their child, or trying to impress other parents along with their child’s skill, or covertly hoping to one day live off their kid’s earnings, the ugly parent is driven by a compulsive desire to control each and every aspect of his or her youngster’s career, often according to a groundless assumption that their child is destined for tennis stardom.