Sports360AZ
By Adonis Watt
In 2025 the United States Tennis Association launched USTA Coaching. This is to address the growing number of players throughout the US. The goal of the program is to give every player access to a quality coach.
Miguel Coelho is one of these coaches. Coach Coelho is from Portugal and began playing tennis at 12-years-old. For Coelho the aspect of tennis that set it apart from other sports is its individualism, and how it causes you to think of different ways to attack it. His love for tennis evolved quickly. By the time he was 17 he knew he wanted to be a coach. 30 years later he still loves coaching and gives credit to those who coached him. He said, “I was very lucky because I always had very good coaches that were a source of inspiration for me.”
Coelho has been in Phoenix for eight years and mostly coaches players up to 16-years- old. Coelho doesn’t just want to be a coach; he wants to be a mentor. As a mentor, “It’s about creating an environment where the athletes feel like they can develop on the court and trust you off the court.”
Coelho has been coaching for 30 years, even though that’s a longtime not a lot has changed within the game. Coelho said that yes, the players have gotten bigger, faster, stronger, but the basics of tennis are still the same. One thing that has changed is how much information is available. This can become a problem because the athletes Coelho train, or parents of those athletes may come to him with new techniques without completely knowing how useful they are. Coelho takes a researched-based approach to how he coaches; this means that he won’t try something new if it’s not proven or appropriate for the level of the athlete.
With Coelho coaching for 30 years now, one may ask what keeps him going. For Coelho he still finds joy out of seeing the development and hard work of the players, these are some of the reasons he doesn’t know when he’ll call it quits. The USTA wants to equip each player with a coach, the hope should be that there are more coaches like Miguel Coelho so each player can get more than tips to get better at tennis, but also the care and passion that Coelho dedicates to his players.
