about me

Some people like to know a little more about me before they book a lesson, so hopefully this helps…

I first fell in love with the game of tennis back in the day watching Chris Evert and Björn Borg at Wimbledon, and was soon playing and competing locally in the UK. I played county tennis and did well considering how little coaching I had, but alas I didn’t quite have the solid foundations or self-belief needed as I became a teenager. Around about then I threw my rackets down in disgust as my grand slam dreams reached their expiry date.

I started my journey into teaching nearly a decade later in 1992, with the Lawn Tennis Association in the UK, and began to work in local schools, clubs and for local authorities.

Founded in 1983, The Stonebridge Academy of Lawn Tennis Coaching was still the UK’s only full-time tennis teacher training establishment, when I enrolled in 1993. The vision of Adrian Stonebridge – The Diploma in Tennis Coaching and Applied Administration was heavily focused on fitness, footwork, the rally and a deep concentration on the contacts and bounces that would later resonate with other teaching systems. I graduated as top student in 1994 and continued to gain experience and confidence teaching locally.

While living and teaching in the US, I started down the Professional Tennis Registry‘s internationally recognized path of teacher training, and was certified as a PTR pro in 2002, increasing my knowledge of different governing bodies and coaching methods.

Years later… just as I was about to give it all up, overwhelmed by the amount of tennis teaching information and misinformation I had absorbed, I discovered Oscar Wegner and his simple little book ‘Play Better Tennis in Two Hours’ and from there some of the other possibilities that tennis could offer.

Along the way I began to practice Yoga and breathing exercises to save my own body from a life of not stretching enough and soon stumbled across The Zen of Tennis and The Inner Game and the benefits these mental, emotional and psychological approaches could bring to tennis and life.

I could talk for a lifetime about tennis, but that’s most of my influences as a teacher of the game for the last thirty years.

Tennis has been an amazing blessing in my life from which I’ve learned and gained more than I could imagine, so hopefully I can pass a little of all this onto other people to feel the lasting benefits I do…