What type of tournament should you focus on?

You need to think hard about your career path before you decide where, and when, to play. And you have to know what your current goals are. Should you play:

· Junior or senior events, or a mixture of the two?
· Within your age group, or in the age group above?
· Professional events, or concentrate on junior tournaments?
· Tournaments in your own country, or play abroad?
· On one particular surface, or on a variety of different kinds?

As a rule, you should play a mixture of events - national, junior and some professional events - on a variety of surfaces. Experience suggests that this is the best way of reaching the win/loss ratio you should be aiming at, which is two wins to every one loss.

How many weeks should you play per year?

The number of weeks you decide to play will depend on your current focus. Is it to be No. 1 national junior? Is it to be top 30 in the regional rankings? To make it into the top 100 Junior ITF rankings? Or to make a breakthrough into the professional rankings?

For example, if your focus is to break into the top 100 Junior ITF Rankings, you will need to play somewhere between five and ten ITF Junior World Ranking events to bring your ranking up to that level - beginning first of all with Group 5 and 4 level events and gradually moving on to play higher-group events.

What's your current goal?

What events you play will depend on your focus, that is, your current goal. What are you trying to achieve? Try to focus on each level of your career path until you have achieved it.

Once you've achieved that goal, focus on the next.

Occasionally, you should 'play up' in tournaments to gain useful experience.

Remember

You should always be able to adapt your schedule so that you can keep to the win/loss ratio of 2 wins to 1 loss.