A lot of people have been signing up for a free TopCourt trial membership. Why not? You get a 14-day free trial to demo the product.
I was skeptical at first, but as more and more content has been coming in, I’m pretty much sold. One reason is that I’m a sucker for drills I can do with a coach or a hitting partner. I used to be one of those guys who only played practice matches every time I stepped out on the court. Often with a new racquet in my hand. No wonder improvement was slow and frustrating. Nowadays I really try to focus on improving all different parts of my game, from strengthening my body and mind to working on my weaknesses over and over again. I’m not sure everyone is into online instruction and have the desire to take the learnings from videos over to the practice court, but why not give it a go with a free top court trial membership?
Get your free 14-day TopCourt Trial by clicking here.
TopCourt Coaches
The current roster of TopCourt coaches are:
Fernando Verdasco
Lindsay Davenport
Genie Bouchard
The Bryan Brothers
Taylor Fritz
Belinda Bencic
Sloane Stephens
Monica Puig
Ajla Tomljanovic
Brad Gilbert
Petra Kvitova
Andrey Rublev
Elina Svitolina
Sofia Kenin
Paul Annacone
Reilly Opelka
Aryna Sabalenka
Casper Ruud
Tommy Paul
Sam Querrey
Jelena Ostapenko
Mackenzie McDonald
Iga Swiatek
Corentin Moutet
Caty McNally
Katie Boulter
Phew! That’s a long list! Videos are updated periodically. I have been watching a little bit of everything. From volley drills that the Bryan Brothers have done to Verdascos forehand and Ajla Tomljanovic backhand. I’m still waiting for a player with a one-handed backhand to join the roster. Are we going extinct? Is the two-hander dominating that badly?
I digress. I wanted to add a bit to previous TopCourt review.
TopCourt Pros and Cons
+ Great production quality
+ Fantastic coaching line-up
+ The videos are short and sweet and well summarized
+ New content uploaded regularly
– You can’t pay monthly, but need to commit to a year ($15 a month equals $180 total – which is not too bad compared to other online coaching fees)
– I haven’t yet seen any materials towards beginners or lower-level intermediate players – it seems focused on pretty solid players from 4.0 at least (the rest you can find on YouTube I guess)
– No one-handed backhand players (yet)
Ideas for improvement:
Monthly subscription model
Downloadable materials like pdfs with drills and tips.
5 comments
The free trial is a no-brainer. The subscription model will be their downfall.
Nice footage and a pleasure to watch. However, I think they have gone overboard with dividing the material into short 5 minute clips. Almost looks like they are trying to make it look like they have more material than there actually is. Currently, it’s no problem to view the entire content in a few hours.
For those who haven´t seen it, TopCourt have brought these players and trainers to some photogenic location with nice surroundings.
They have hired a professional videographer and shot some court action with (probably) two cameras. Then edited with some generic background music and graphics to insert some text into the material. Effective and looks good but a bit repetitive in the long run.
They way this is produced, I fear the material will be a bit static. If they only shoot on the same location, they will have to bring players there and this can’t happen very often. It would be interesting to see some of the active players in their natural habitats and perhaps follow their training for a day or seven. It won’t be such pretty footage but interesting none the less. Maybe I’m a nerd but I like watching informal video on Youtube from players doing their practice sessions.
If they brought in material like that, they would have an endless stream of video not requiring much other post processing than cutting out less interesting stuff. One interesting concept would be to follow the progress of one or two player working on some specific detail and see how they go about it.
For example: Player A is working on improving accuracy on the serve by 15 percent.
Player B is trying to add 8 mph to the forehand.
Players could be equipped with that In/Out sensor system to measure statistics and we could follow the ongoing work, analysis, drills and progress. It would go on until mission accomplished or failed. That would totally mandate a one year subscribtion. In fact, a long term subscription is the only thing that would work for such coverage. Should be cheap to produce with one action cam and one In/Out sensor per subject.
One (fixable) problem I encountered during the trial was performance problems of their site. It took long to load the videos and it got worse over time. Perhaps because of many trial customers. This made the experience uncomfortable because of the very many short clips that had to be loaded.
Some good points there, Hans!
Is deactivating the “topcourt”-account enough to end the trial and membership? Thanks and best regards
I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it should be!
Got the same question. Chris, have you figured it out meanwhile?
I think the lackluster navigation and website overall is a negative aspect as well. It seems a bit unfinished and with no legal information, contacts or faq and that sort of stuff, it seems sketchy even with all those flashing, prominent faces.