Insider's Playbook: Smart Strategies for Competitive Senior Tennis Players Over 50 Podcast By Mike Rogers - Founder of Senior Tennis Unpacked cover art

Insider's Playbook: Smart Strategies for Competitive Senior Tennis Players Over 50

Insider's Playbook: Smart Strategies for Competitive Senior Tennis Players Over 50

By: Mike Rogers - Founder of Senior Tennis Unpacked
Listen for free

If you’re over 50 and still driven by competition, Insider’s Playbook is built for you. This podcast goes beyond generic tennis advice and into the strategic, physical, and mental edge senior players need to compete longer and win more matches.

Hosted by senior tennis tournament competitor Mike Rogers, and founder os SeniorTennisUnpacked.com, each episode features elite coaches, national champions, and performance experts sharing real strategies to help you move smarter, train efficiently, stay injury-resistant, and out-think opponents who rely on youth alone.

Subscribe now and step inside the playbook that top senior players use to keep raising their game.

2025 Mike Rogers - Founder of Senior Tennis Unpacked
Tennis
Episodes
  • Top 10 Reasons Most Seniors Never Reach 4.0 (And Stay Stuck at 3.5) Part 1 I Peter Freeman
    Mar 31 2026

    Peter Freeman has coached players at every level — and after years of watching obsessed adult players hit a wall at 3.5, he built a list of exactly why they stay stuck. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Peter breaks down the first five reasons most senior players never make the jump to 4.0 — and none of them are about your strokes. We're talking limiting beliefs that were wired into you before you ever picked up a racket, the patience trap that's quietly killing your development, the Tin Cup problem that's costing you matches you should be winning, why your footwork is broken in a way you can't see, and the singles obsession that's sabotaging your doubles game.

    Key Takeaways:

    • The "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" belief isn't just discouraging — it's the #1 reason players stop developing, and most seniors don't even realize they're carrying it into every match.
    • Five minutes of focused shadow strokes daily will outperform hours of unfocused ball-hitting — and most players will quit before they see it working.
    • The Tin Cup trap: having beautiful strokes means nothing if you're using them at the wrong moment. Knowing when to go for it versus when to put it in play is the real skill.
    • Footwork and foot speed are not the same thing — and seniors who confuse them are leaving the single biggest competitive edge on the table.
    • If you mostly watch singles to get better at doubles, you're studying the wrong game entirely.

    Peter Freeman’s Slice Serve MD

    https://crunchtimecoaching.com/tennis-thrive/slice-md-op/

    Chapter Timeline:

    00:00 Episode 27 Introduction

    01:38 Introduction and Background

    06:35 #1 Limiting Beliefs

    11:10 #2 No Patience for Real Change

    14:32 #3 Not Realistic On How to Use Advanced Technique You Developed

    20:14 #4 Seniors confuse Footwork with Footspeed

    29:08 #5 Most Seniors Study Singles but Play Doubles

    32:11 #6 Seniors Have Not Serve Clarity

    32:12 Slice Serve MD

    34:16 Show Wrap Up

    🌐 Explore everything: https://SeniorTennisUnpacked.com

    🎁 FREE RESOURCE: Get Fit, Get Strong A performance guide built specifically for senior tennis players who want to move better and last longer on court. 👉 https://subscribe.seniortennisunpacked.com/GFGS1

    🔑 THE MATCH INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM™ A complete framework for early opponent reads and in-match adjustments — built for senior tennis doubles and singles players who want to play smarter, not harder. 👉 http://SeniorTennisUnpacked.com/match-system

    Show more Show less
    36 mins
  • Stop Beating Yourself Up: The Mental Shift for 50+ Tennis I Tommy Rounds
    Mar 24 2026

    Most senior players walk off the court replaying every missed shot like a personal failure — but pro poker player Tommy Rounds says that's exactly the thinking that's costing you matches before you even pick up your racquet. In this episode, Tommy breaks down the concept of expected value and how thinking like a poker pro — evaluating the quality of your decisions rather than the outcome of any single shot — can flatten your emotional swings, sharpen your shot selection under pressure, and finally get you out of that post-match spiral where every error feels like proof your game is falling apart.

    Key Takeaways

    • A missed shot isn't automatically a bad decision — outcomes and decision quality are not the same thing
    • Chasing "safe" results on big points often costs you more in the long run than playing your game
    • You can't control whether the ball goes in, but you can control whether you made the right call
    • Emotional steadiness isn't a personality trait — it's a byproduct of trusting a process
    • You bring what you bring into a match that day — train it, trust it, and stop prosecuting yourself for the rest

    Contact Tommy Rounds
    📧 email: tommy@gamesetmatchanalytics.com

    🖥️ Website: https://www.gamesetmatchanalytics.com

    Chapter Timeline:

    00:00 Insider's Playbook Intro

    01:01 Understanding Expected Value (EV)

    01:49 Managing Emotions in the Heat of the Moment

    02:21 The Long Game vs. Single Outcomes

    03:21 Applying Poker Logic to Tennis Break Points

    04:46 Psychological Costs of Results-Oriented Thinking

    06:07 Evaluating Decision Quality in Real-Time

    08:01 Building Trust in Strategy During Slumps

    09:19 Emotional Control and Staying in the Moment

    10:37 Shot Selection and Risk Management

    11:23 Mindset Shift: Process Over Results

    12:17 Trusting Your Skill Level on Match Day

    13:59 Episode Wrap Up

    🌐 Explore everything: https://SeniorTennisUnpacked.com

    🎁 FREE RESOURCE: Get Fit, Get Strong A performance guide built specifically for senior tennis players who want to move better and last longer on court. 👉 https://subscribe.seniortennisunpacked.com/GFGS1

    🔑 THE MATCH INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM™ A complete framework for early opponent reads and in-match adjustments — built for senior tennis doubles and singles players who want to play smarter, not harder. 👉 http://SeniorTennisUnpacked.com/match-system

    Show more Show less
    15 mins
  • They Know Your Next Shot Before You Hit It I Tommy Rounds
    Mar 17 2026

    What does poker strategy have to do with your tennis game? More than you think.

    In this episode of Insider's Playbook, Mike Rogers sits down with Tommy Rounds — professional poker player and tennis strategy analyst — to explore one of the most overlooked problems in competitive senior tennis: predictability.

    Most players over 50 spend their match prep time studying opponents. Tommy argues you're missing half the equation. The best poker players in the world spend 80 to 90 percent of their preparation analyzing their own tendencies — and the strongest tennis players do the same thing.

    In this episode you'll discover:

    • Why predictable players are essentially competing with their cards face up — and how opponents use that against you
    • The "scout yourself" exercise: how to build your own scouting report before your opponent does it for you
    • How Alcaraz uses the drop shot as a strategic bluff — and what that means for your game at any level
    • The critical difference between pattern-based weaknesses and structural weaknesses, and why it changes how aggressively you should exploit each one
    • One simple serve adjustment that makes you significantly harder to read starting in your very next match
    • Why always going to the backhand on big points can quietly make you the most predictable player on the court

    Whether you're competing in USTA League play, senior tournaments, or just trying to finally beat that one guy at your club who seems to read everything you do — this conversation will change how you think about match preparation.

    Contact Tommy Rounds
    📧 email: tommy@gamesetmatchanalytics.com

    🖥️ Website: https://www.gamesetmatchanalytics.com

    Chapter Timeline:

    0:00 – Intro: Are You an Open Book on the Court?

    1:31 – Meet Tommy Rounds

    1:42 – What Does "Exploitable" Mean in Poker?

    2:27 – How Pro Poker Players Balance Their Game

    3:30 – What Happens When You're Too Predictable?

    4:19 – How Predictability Shows Up in Tennis

    5:40 – The Scout Yourself Exercise

    7:21 – Scouting vs. Beating Yourself Up

    8:03 – Even the Pros Have Tells

    8:42 – Why We Keep Repeating What's Comfortable

    0:09 – How to Bluff in Tennis (The Alcaraz Drop Shot)

    12:08 – The Serve Variation Nobody Uses Enough

    12:28 – Why Always Going to the Backhand Can Backfire

    13:19 – Pattern Weaknesses vs. Structural Weaknesses

    14:47 – One Simple Adjustment for Your Next Match

    16:38 – Tommy's Final Advice

    17:27 – Key Takeaways + Outro

    🌐 Explore everything: https://SeniorTennisUnpacked.com

    🎁 FREE RESOURCE: Get Fit, Get Strong A performance guide built specifically for senior tennis players who want to move better and last longer on court. 👉 https://subscribe.seniortennisunpacked.com/GFGS1

    🔑 THE MATCH INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM™ A complete framework for early opponent reads and in-match adjustments — built for senior tennis doubles and singles players who want to play smarter, not harder. 👉 http://SeniorTennisUnpacked.com/match-system

    Show more Show less
    19 mins
No reviews yet