Tennis Evaluation Form

Each evaluator gets one sheet per player, written for the yellow ball on a full court. Fill in the header before the first ball. Plays and Backhand save you guessing later which side was which.

Need a PDF? Choose Print Form under the sheet, then Save as PDF in your browser's print dialog.

The counts assume the drills in the tryout plan further down, but any session with fed balls, serves, and a few points will do. There are two Copy as Table buttons. The one on the level table copies the level wording alone, and the one under the sheet copies a ten-player grid with the wording beneath it.

Adding up every evaluator's scores by hand? The €19 Tryout Decision Kit marks who's on the bubble and drafts a message to every family ↓

Seven numbers capture a single afternoon. A season needs finer rows. When you set up a tennis account in Striveon and start from its tennis starter content, you get five skill areas (Skill Sets in the app) with four skills each, rated 1 to 10 by default. Each area also gets three rating bands as its Evaluation Criteria, written as counts like the sheet. New tennis accounts that start from the tennis starter content get these bands. If a Skill Set shows no bands under Evaluation Criteria, write your own.

You can rewrite a band or rename an area at any time. Removing a skill also deletes the ratings your players already have on it, so keep a skill you still want to compare across the season.

The Three Bands, Area by Area

The Groundstrokes Intermediate band asks for 6 of 10 coach-fed balls between the service line and the baseline. So a 4 on the printable sheet (6 or 7 of 10) corresponds to the Intermediate band's wording, 4 to 7 in the app. You still pick the number yourself, and nothing converts the sheet for you.

With the starter bands in place, they come along when you score. In Evaluate players, a Rating criteria panel shows the three bands for the skill's area and opens the band that holds the number you just pressed. On a wide screen it sits beside the roster, and on a narrower one it opens with Show criteria. An area without bands of its own falls back to your organization's general criteria.

Try the Five Areas in the Online Scorer

This online scorer carries the same five areas and 20 skills. Mark each skill 1 to 10 and the profile under the scorer fills in. Close the page and the marks are gone, so copy them or save the profile picture before you leave.

A tennis progress report lines up the same rows over time. This one uses the seven rows of the printable sheet, so your tryout scores become its Baseline column and every later score compares like with like. Score it at the start of the season, around the middle, and at the end.

Write each goal as a count. "Better serve" gives a player nothing to check. Six of eight first serves in, by the end of the season, tells them what the next score will measure and lets them practice toward it.

Paper works for one player across one season. With a full squad over several seasons, you keep the five skill areas above in one place and add one evaluation after another.

A tennis assessment often means a test, something a player repeats in March and again in June. The ITF wrote one for strokes, the ITN On Court Assessment(opens in new tab), so that players with no competition results could still be rated. Each shot scores points for the area where its first bounce lands.

Scoring Each Shot

• Second bounce between the baseline and the bonus line. Add 1 point.
• Second bounce past the bonus line. Double the first-bounce points, so a 4 becomes an 8.
• Every ball that lands in. 1 more point, added at the end of the section.

The full assessment adds a timed mobility run worth up to 76 points, for 430 in all. The ITF converts that total into an ITN with separate tables for men and women, and takes a player's true level as the average of their last three assessments. The sheet below keeps the four stroke sections. Its total of 354 is a score to beat next time, and it is not an ITN.

Before the players arrive, you mark one end of the court. The guide splits the marking into two setups and allows 10 minutes for each.

• Setup 1, for groundstroke and volley depth. Two depth lines across the court, 6 feet (1.82 m) behind the service line and another 6 feet beyond that. Then the bonus line behind the baseline, 16 feet (4.87 m) back at the center and 15 feet (4.57 m) back at each doubles sideline.
• Setup 2, for groundstroke accuracy and the serve. An accuracy line 81 inches (2.05 m) inside each singles sideline, net to baseline, with the same bonus line. A service box is 162 inches wide, so that line also splits each box in half. The guide's text names a wide and a middle target in each box but gives the middle one no measurement, so this page reads the outer half as the wide target and the inner half, against the center service line, as the middle one. A serve in the half set for that serve is on target, and one in the other half lands elsewhere in the box.

The ITF aimed to keep the test under 10 minutes a player. Its own planning table gives 44 minutes for six players with one assessor on one court. Testing more than six? The guide adds a second court where the others warm up.

Six Fitness Tests on One Court

The fitness half needs a tape measure, a stopwatch, cones, and a 2 kg (4.4 lb) medicine ball. Run it after a warm-up. The sprint, jump, and throw protocols record the best trial. The shuttle study ran two trials without naming which one counts, so write both down.

• 20 m (22 yd) sprint. From the ready position on the baseline, no racket, three runs. The protocol is the ITF's fitness testing guide(opens in new tab).
• 4 x 5 m shuttle, open stance. Two cones 5 m (16.4 ft) apart and three 180-degree turns. At each turn the player arrives in an open stance and touches the top of a 50 cm (20 in) cone. Two trials, at least a minute apart, as set out by researchers from the Italian Tennis Federation and two universities(opens in new tab) in the ITF's coaching review.
• Standing long jump. Toes at the back of the baseline, arm swing allowed, measured to the nearest heel. At least three jumps, from the same ITF guide.
• Three medicine ball throws, 2 kg. Overhead, forehand side, and backhand side, each one without crossing the line. Two throws per test, 45 seconds apart, measured to the nearest 5 cm (2 in), as in a study of Spanish national-camp juniors(opens in new tab).

The ITF's own throws use a 1 kg (2.2 lb) ball. Pick one weight and keep it, since a 1 kg throw and a 2 kg throw cannot be compared.

Compare each of your players with their own last result. Test two or three times a season, on the same surface, at the same time of day, by the same tester.

A new tennis account that starts from the starter content gets both tests as assessment templates on the Skill Sets page. If yours has none, create them there from the protocols above. Each field carries its protocol as instructions, and each ITN field's name carries the section maximum. You can record one player at a time, or several at once with Record multiple on the test's card. See athlete performance testing for how templates and results fit together.

USTA's NTRP(opens in new tab) rates adult players "from 1.5 (beginner) through 7.0 (touring pro)" in half-point steps. Ratings come from play in USTA adult leagues and move slowly, so an NTRP tells you the level a player has held for a while.

Your high school players may also carry a UTR, the Universal Tennis Rating. Its maker, Universal Tennis, became an official NFHS partner(opens in new tab) in 2021. The NFHS announcement describes it as running from 1 to 16.50, calculated from a player's past 30 eligible matches. The ITF's World Tennis Number(opens in new tab) runs the other way, with 40 closer to a beginner and 1 at the top of the pro game.

Juniors have their own Junior NTRP Rating Characteristics(opens in new tab). Its 3.0 "may play in a low position on a high school team," and its 4.0 also "competes on a high school tennis team," so one school roster spans several levels. Read together, those lines put the bottom of a school roster, where your tryout's cut line falls, around 3.0 to 3.5.

3.0 to 3.5 on the Sheet

One way to read USTA's 3.5 row in the table above is that it adds two things, depth on groundstrokes and placement on the second serve. When a 3.0 junior lands 5 of 10 past the service line at your tryout, look at their Serve row next, since placing the second serve is the other half of the step to 3.5.

Players 10 and under compete with slower balls on smaller courts. The ITF's Tennis Play and Stay(opens in new tab) page says that since 2012, competition at that age "must be played with slower Red, Orange and Green balls on the appropriately sized courts." The Play and Stay page gives no age for each color.

In the US, USTA's Net Generation pathway regulations(opens in new tab) do set ages. Red starts at 5, and USTA strongly recommends no orange ball before 7. Green opens at 9 (or at 7 or 8 after enough PlayTracker progress), and yellow at 11 (or earlier the same way). Within those gates, players move up on results as well as age, so two 9-year-olds can be on different balls. Write down the ball each of your players actually uses, because a count on an orange ball and a count on a yellow ball are two different counts.

Source: ITF, Tennis Play and Stay. Ball speeds are the ITF's estimates. Imperial figures are rounded conversions.

What to Score on Each Ball

• Red. How long the rally lasts on the short court, and whether the ball is met ahead of the body. An underhand serve is fine.
• Orange. Direction. Ask for cross-court, then down the line, and watch whether the player gets back to the middle afterward.
• Green. Depth and spin on the full court, a serve aimed at one side of the box, and the first signs of a plan in the points.

When a player moves from orange to green, start a new baseline. For practice work at each stage, see tennis drills for beginners.

This plan moves 24 players through 120 minutes on four courts with three evaluators. Each evaluator sits at one of courts 1 to 3 for the whole session and scores every player who comes through, on all seven rows. All three scored courts run the same block in the same order, so a disagreement between two evaluators can't come from the drill.

Court 4 has no evaluator. The ITF's ITN guide suggests a warm-up court once more than six players are tested on one court, and here the group on court 4 plays doubles until its next round. Besides the evaluators, you need three court coaches to feed on courts 1 to 3 and one helper on court 4 who also keeps the clock, or three adults in all with the version below.

With Three Adults, or More or Fewer Players

Three adults can run the day. Each evaluator feeds on their own court, gives the cue, and calls out where every ball lands, and a player waiting for their turn, not the one returning, writes it down. The ITF's own assessment splits the job the same way. Returning captains can run the doubles on court 4 and keep the clock.

For other sizes, keep groups of six. With 30 players, add a fifth group and a fifth round, and in each round one group plays on court 4 while another rests, for 145 minutes in all. With 18, run three groups on courts 1 to 3 for three rounds and leave court 4 out, which takes 95 minutes. When your count doesn't divide by six, use groups of five, or one group of four, rather than seven, since the block is already tight at six.

Count Together Before Round 1

The last five minutes of warm-up belong to the evaluators. On court 1, two players from Group A hit their 10 fed balls, and each of you keeps a private tally of the deep ones. A count leaves little to argue about except the line. Agree that a ball on the line counts, the rule the ITF uses in its own assessment, and that argument is settled before the first group reaches your court.

One Cue for Coachability

After each player's fifth fed ball, the court coach gives one cue, such as "turn your shoulders sooner." Say it loud enough for the evaluator to hear. Coachability then scores what happens next, on balls 6 to 10 and again in the points. For more drills to build a block of your own, see the tennis drills library, and the tennis serve drills for the serving segment.

When a Court Falls Behind

Six players and seven rows in 25 minutes is tight. If a court runs late, take the minutes out of the points, because the drills feed the counts on the sheet. Fewer points give you fewer looks at Tactics/IQ, the one row with no other source on the day.

Each row ends the day with three numbers, one per evaluator. The steps below turn them into a total and a cut line. If you use the Tryout Decision Kit, it works with the average of the evaluators' scores, and the middle score below is the rule for compiling by hand.

1. Read the spread before any middle score. Go through each row's three numbers first. When the highest and lowest sit two or more apart, mark the row in the Spread column and ask each evaluator which balls they counted. If the gap stays, the player goes to the meeting whatever the total says.
2. Take the middle score on each row. A 2, a 3, and a 5 give a 3, and =MEDIAN() does the same in a spreadsheet. When two evaluators agree on a row, the third can't change it. When two sit a level apart, the third one decides.
3. Add the seven middle scores for a total out of 35.
4. Draw the line. Fill your spots by total. Players within 2 points of the cut line get talked through at the meeting, Spread rows and notes in hand. The 2-point band is a line we drew. Two rows where a single evaluator decides the middle score can move a total by 2 points between them.

Making the Team, Then Setting the Order

The tryout decides who makes the team. The lineup order can come later, from a challenge ladder. On a ladder, a player challenges someone listed above them and the winner takes the higher spot. Your tryout totals give it a starting order.

At Anderson High School, whose challenge match rules(opens in new tab) sit on USTA's team platform, challenge matches are "8-game pro sets" with no-ad scoring and a "7-point tiebreak at 7-all." A match played during class can instead run first to 6, with a tiebreak at 6-6.

When you tell a player they missed the cut, name one count for them to chase, such as seven of eight returns cross-court, and see making tryout cuts for the rest of that conversation. The tennis practice plan takes over once practices start.