EVENT INFORMATION
A fantastic professional development opportunity for coaches to learn from world-class speakers and industry experts in a range of topics.
'Learner, Performer, Leader'
The role of the coach can never be underestimated. Not only for the environments that they help create and foster, but also the community and its players in which they teach, inspire and grow the game within.
That is why we are thrilled to be delivering our third premium Virtual Grand Slam Coaches’ Conference in 2023.
Showcasing world class speaker and industry experts across five key pillars:
- Talent
- Hot Shots
- Business Development
- Strength & Conditioning
- Performance
We invite coaches of all levels to take part in this industry-leading professional development experience and opportunity, which is a complimentary Tennis Australia Coach Member benefit!
This years event will include:
- Fifteen keynote presentations (30 minutes)
- One presentation released every day
- Five bonus presentations from the Tennis Australia team
- Access to all of the presentations from the Virtual Grand Slam Coaches Conference 2022
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DOWNLOAD DELEGATE BOOKLET
For all information regarding the Virtual Grand Slam Coaches’ Conference, view the complimentary Delegate Booklet via the link below.
EVENT SCHEDULE
The Virtual Grand Slam Coaches’ Conference full event schedule is available below.
Speakers
Marco Panichi
Strength and Conditioning Coach
Novak Djokovic
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Marco Panichi is an Italian professional Coach and Massophysiotherapist. He is also a former professional athlete, and two- time Italian long jump Champion. After graduating from NSU University in Florida, USA with a degree in Sport Coaching and Sport Psychology, Marco has worked as a consultant and associate for many International Sport Academies. These include Sanchez-Casal, IMG Bradenton, Beijing Guangzhou, and the National Tennis Federations of Italy, Germany, China, Israel, and Hong-Kong.
He is an Official GPTCA (Global Professional Tennis Coach Association) Representative and lecturer ATP/WTA, a Massophysiotherapist at National Professional School PG, in Italy, a lecturer at the Sports Science School in Beijing, and an athletic Trainer, 2nd Degree, FIT. Panichi is also an International Coach at Formia Fidal Sports School (Tracks and Fields Italian Federation), and he is an expert in Biomechanics applied to Sports at CONI, Italy.
During his long career he has coached and worked with many professional athletes: Novak Djokovic, Christian Garin, Andrea Sanguinetti, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Ivo Karlovic, Leonardo Mayer, Simone Bolelli, Alessandro Giannessi, Matteo Donati, Fabio Fognini, Francesca Schiavone, Lu Yen-hsun, Li Na, Daniela Hantuchova, Karin Knapp, and Anna Smashnova.
Suzi Riley
Past Director of Bolton Arena & WTA Coach
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Suzi is from Melbourne and played College Tennis in America at San Jose State University.
Suzi has coached players at every stage of the pathway from 10U performance players through to Processional players. Suzi was the Director of Tennis at Bolton Arena for 10 years, and developed it into one of the leading academies in the UK.
The academy was recognised as an LTA International High Performance Centre, awarded to only 4 academies in the country. Suzi is currently coaching WTA player, Amari Banks.
Martin Rocca
Tennis Director
MiniPlayers – Tennis Aid
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Martin Rocca is the Mini Players Programme Director and co-Founder of the TennisAid Association. He is also a member of the RFET (Spanish Tennis Federation) Coaches Education Board.
Martin is originally from Argentina, where he coached for 9 years, before heading to New York and then Barcelona. Martin was in Spain for 16 years, where until recently he was the Junior Tennis Program Director at Sanchez-Casal Academy.
Stanford Boster
Boster Sports and Health Management
USTA Men’s National Coach
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Stanford Boster is the United States Tennis Association Men's National Coach, joining the organisation in September 2011. Stanford’s responsibilities include facilitating coaching and training programs to assist in the development of our best prospects at the USTA Training Centers as well as at other locations.
Nikhil Jayashankar
Head of Business Development
SwingVision
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Nikhil Jayashankar leads Business Development for SwingVision.
He's based in San Francisco and is a life-long tennis player that grew up in the Bay Area and played college tennis at UC Berkeley. His responsibilities at SwingVision include partnerships and sales with clubs, academies, and colleges. Nikhil works closely with coaches, clubs, and college teams to enhance their services with SwingVision.
Nikhil is extremely passionate about the sport and how technology can benefit coaches and players alike.
Alan Myers
CEO
Fitstop Asia Pacific
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Alan Myers is the CEO of Fitstop Asia Pacific, one of the fastest growing functional fitness franchises. Endorsed by more than 20 years of experience within the health and wellness industry, Alan specialises in Franchising and Business Development. He has successfully supported the growth of a number of industry leading franchise networks, one of which has grown to over 260 locations within Australia and New Zealand.
Alan’s extensive experience focused on business strategy, combined with his exceptional leadership skills, have been an integral part in contributing to Fitstop’s overall expansion, growing 18 locations into more than 100 locations across Australia and New Zealand. Fitstop are now looking to establish their footprint into Asia and the United States.
Alan is focused on building a franchise network that is unique within the fitness industry. His vision is to create a high performance culture with a network that is established on a foundation of strong relationships, transparent communication, and a collaborative environment; something he believes isn’t normally seen within the Fitness Franchise Sector.
Alan’s strength lies in his ability to empower teams to build business foundations through improved processes and systems which drive performance, ensuring longevity and sustainability for franchise networks (inclusive of the franchisor and franchisee).
In Alan’s early life, he spent 11 years in the Victorian Police Force which developed his leadership skills and built the early foundations for success with strengths in process, communication, negotiation and accountability which he has successfully transferred into the business world.
Emma Wells
National Director
PTR UK
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Emma is the National Director of PTR for the UK and is the first ever female international director for PTR.
Emma has worked in both the public and private sports sector for over 15 years and now operates her own company in, Wimbledon, London, UK with one of the largest single park programs with over 600 weekly participants.
Emma is a Coach Education tutor for the LTA in the UK & is a speaker for kids tennis, having spoken at conferences in the USA, Switzerland, France and the UK as well as online seminars for Wilson.
Dr Mark Kovacs
Performance Physiologist
CEO of the Kovacs Institute
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Dr. Mark Kovacs is a performance physiologist, researcher, professor, author, speaker and coach with an extensive background training and researching elite athletes. He currently runs a consulting firm focused on optimizing human performance by the practical application of cutting edge science.
He formerly directed the Sport Science, Strength & Conditioning and Coaching Education departments for the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and was the Director of the Gatorade Sport Science Institute.
He currently serves as the Executive Director of the International Tennis Performance Association (iTPA); Dr. Kovacs is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). He was an All-American and NCAA doubles champion in tennis at Auburn University and earned his PhD from the University of Alabama. He is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (CTPS) and Master Tennis Performance Specialist (MTPS) through the iTPA, and in 2012 he was the youngest ever recipient of the International Tennis Hall of Fame Educational Merit Award.
He has worked with hundreds of elite athletes in dozens of sports providing high performance sport science services in the lab, on the court, field, pitch, track and ring. He now travels the world speaking at conferences and to corporations and universities, in addition to video shoots and interviews.
He is also CEO of Kovacs Institute, offering exclusive and bespoke services for elite individuals and companies looking to optimize business, sport and lifestyle through the latest performance sciences, in addition to their online courses.
Mike James
Chief Tennis Analyst
Mouratoglou Analytics
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Mike is currently “Chief Tennis Analyst at Mouratoglou Analytics based in the South of France & specialises in performance analysis, supporting coaches & player support teams with match reports, season data and opponent scouting.
Mike has covered several top 100 ATP/WTA players over the last seven years in both singles & doubles including, Iga Swiatek & Holger Rune to name but a few.
Kenneth Bastiaens
Player and Skill Development Expert
Owner/Director Coach To Competence
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Kenneth believes in the power of sport and coaching. He is enthusiastic about growing and activating the potential of coaches and sport federations. Kenneth loves coaching for more than 25 years and has coached from grassroots through to elite level players. As a Master in Sports Training and with a background of 15 years of high-performance player development in Belgian Tennis, Kenneth uses his unique experience and expertise to improve sport development with a creative & cutting edge approach.
In 2014 Kenneth founded his company Coach2Competence -activate your potential- and created Multi SkillZ® -Skills for sports & life-. Multi Skillz® is the cross-sport athletic skill development method that has been adopted by several federations such as: Belgian Football, Belgian Hockey, Dutch & Belgian Basketball, Swedish Tennis, Flemish Padel, ... Coach2Competence has developed sport-specific development programs to grow children skillful into a sport. Kenneth created the pathway and content of LTA YOUTH (Kids tennis program Great Britain), Stick & Ball (Technical pathway Belgian Hockey), Basketball Skill Up (Technical pathway Flemish Basketball) and now recently Kids Padel (pathway & player development Flemish Tennis & Padel federation).
Dean Brostek
CEO and Co-Founder
Kinetica
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Dean is the CEO and co-founder of Kinetica, a data analytics and strategy company working with the sport, recreation, health and wellbeing sectors.
An economist by trade, Dean has extensive experience in the sport sector working with both sports and government. He helps clients leverage data and analytics to drive improved strategy and operations. Dean is the architect of Aura, Kinetica’s local area data intelligence offer.
Luigi Bertino
National Coach
Italian Tennis Federation
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Luigi is an Italian National Coach, working for Italian Tennis Federation, PTR International Master Professional and Educational Director PTR Italy.
Since 1992, he has been coaching and working as Tennis Director at different famous facilities as “Le Pleiadi Center - Turin”, “Tennis Club Monviso”, “Stampa Sporting Turin” and finally at “Piatti Tennis Center Bordighera”.
Luigi’s main focus is organization and marketing, junior tennis player development programs and research in teaching methods.He has written many articles for Tennis Italiano Magazine, author of “Munchkin Tennis” book, “360° Serve” dvd and speaker at many international tennis conferences.
Carl Maes
Performance Director
Soto Tennis Academy
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Carl Maes is well known in the international world of tennis as a coach, conference presenter, international consultant and manager/director for various governing bodies (LTA, Norway, Belgium, Estonia…) He holds a Master degree in Sport Science and Kinesiology and joined the Belgian Tennis Federation in 1992.
Carl is probably most known for his lifelong involvement with Kim Clijsters, as a coach but also as academy director for the Kim Clijsters Academy for 6 years until 2020. As a coach or performance manager he also worked and travelled with several top 100 male and female players at junior and at professional level, such as Kim Clijsters, Sorana Cirstea, Elise Mertens, Kimmer Coppejans, Kirsten Flipkens, Johanna Konta, Xavier Malisse, Casper Ruud, Laura Robson and Yanina Wickmayer.
Currently Carl lives in the South of Spain with his family working alongside Dan Kiernan where he is Performance Director of the Soto Tennis Academy near Marbella, which he combines with training/coaching WTA Top 25 player Tamara Zidansek from Slovenia.
Belinda Colaneri
Performance Coach Development Manager
Tennis Australia
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Belinda is the Performance Coach Development Manager at Tennis Australia. She has extensive experience in designing, writing and delivering education and professional learning for junior to performance coaches.
She holds Bachelor degrees in Applied Science and Education and is a Tennis Australia High Performance qualified coach with over 20 years coaching experience including coaching numerous National champions and International junior representatives.
Belinda was also a Science and Physical Education teacher, working at many of Melbourne's most prestigious schools.
Scott Draper
Head of Performance Coach Development
Tennis Australia
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Scott is a well credentialed leadership and organisational development consultant, and executive coach. He has broad experience in designing and leading strategic transformational change initiatives at the senior executive level across multiple sectors (e.g. National Security, Financial Services, Federal Government and Series B Start-ups).
Scott Draper is also working as Head of Performance Coach Development at Tennis Australia. Scott has a background as a professional athlete and coach.
Lawrence Robertson
Director of Pathways and Game Development
Tennis Australia
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With over 25 years experience in the sports industry, Lawrence has been involved in tennis for over a decade including time as the Commercial Director of the LTA in the UK where he had responsibility for the commercial and major event portfolio. More recently, he was the CEO of Tennis NSW alongside his role as the GM for the ATP Cup before taking on the role as Director of Pathways & Game Development with oversight for all aspects of competitive play in Australia and integration of emerging formats such as Padel, Pickleball and POP Tennis.
Luke Bourgeois
High Performance Director
Voyager Tennis
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Luke was an AIS scholarship holder and had a successful junior career which included achieving the #1 rank in the Australian juniors, being top 20 in the world in 18/U singles and winning the Australian Open Junior doubles title. He played professionally for twelve years and achieved career high ATP world rankings of 262 singles, 161 in doubles. Luke was also very fortunate to be mentored and coached by one of the world’s best – Tony Roche, throughout his professional career. Rochey was also working with Roger Federer through this same period which gave Luke the incredible opportunity to spend 3 years travelling and training with Roger Federer as a hitting partner. Luke’s role at Voyager is to create high performance programs and player development pathways to help up and coming junior and senior players reach their full potential on and off the court.
Nikita Sayle
Head of Inclusion, Diversity and Programming
Tennis NSW
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Nikita is the Head of Inclusion, Diversity and Programming at Tennis NSW. Nikita’s role at Tennis supports both the organisation and membership in NSW to become welcoming safe and inclusive spaces for people from diverse backgrounds. Nikita is a specialist in developing community programming, supporting both on court and off court pathways in tennis.
She is a Club Pro qualified tennis coach with over 15 years industry experience across player development, competitive play, participation programming, facility management and inclusion.
Marita Morgan
Facility and Inclusion Manager
City Community Tennis
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Marita is the Facility and Inclusion Manager at Sydney’s Award winning club, City Community Tennis. Marita has been key in the development of the Adaptive Tennis Hub Program and City Community Tennis, which provides playing opportunities to people with disability weekly.
Marita has over 10 years’ experience in the disability sector as a disability awareness presenter, NDIS educator and is an advocate for people with disabilities.
Leisl Stimpson
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Leisl is a trained Physical Education teacher and has worked for over 15 years in grassroots and inclusive sport at Sport Australia and Special Olympics. Her current role focusses on training and development to assist coaches and teachers deliver inclusive sport programs. Leisl also coaches an all-ability Football program which is the highlight of her week!
Please note that these speakers may be subject to change.