Built for competitive tennis
Players, Parents, Coaches
Emotional Tools for the Journey
What Is First Ball To Last?
First Ball To Last is a subscription-based emotional intelligence platform built specifically for the world of competitive tennis.
It helps players better understand what they feel, why they feel it, and what to do about it — before, during, and after competition. It also helps parents and coaches better understand the emotional realities of the tennis journey and how to support it in a healthier, more productive way.
Tennis asks a great deal of players and families. FBTL was created to help them meet that challenge with better tools, better language, and a better way forward.
Built for the Entire Tennis Ecosystem
For Players – Learn how to compete with greater awareness, composure, confidence, and emotional control.
For Parents – Better understand the journey your child is living and learn how to support it with wisdom, steadiness, and perspective.
For Coaches – Gain practical language and tools to help develop the whole player, not just the strokes and results.
Tennis Is Highly Emotional.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
Competitive tennis can be exciting, beautiful, and deeply rewarding. It can also be frustrating, lonely, stressful, overwhelming, confusing, and at times emotionally exhausting.
Players deal with nerves, pressure, fear, anger, frustration, doubt, identity, expectations, comparison, disappointment, and the constant challenge of trying to perform under scrutiny. Parents and coaches live inside that same emotional weather, often without a clear roadmap for how to help.
This is not a side issue. This is the experience.
And yet most players are never truly taught how to understand or manage what is happening inside them. They are told to “stay positive,” “move on,” “be tough,” or “focus,” without ever being given a meaningful framework for how to do that.
First Ball To Last gives them that framework.
“We spend so much time on shot selection. Let’s invest an equal amount of time on thought selection.”
-Barry Buss”
So much of emotional support in sports is reactive and corrective. A player struggles, spirals, loses confidence, has a breakdown, or hits a wall—and only then does the conversation begin.
FBTL turns that model on its head.
This program is proactive and preventative. It is based on a simple but powerful idea: if we know the emotional challenges that are coming, why not prepare for them before they arrive?
After a lifetime in tennis, I know what this game does to people. I know the pressures it creates. I know the patterns, the pain points, the internal battles, and the emotional swings that come with the tennis life. I may not know exactly when they will arrive for each player or in what degree, but I know they are coming.
That is why FBTL exists.
What Members Gain?
WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING?
“A Home Run. I so wish I had a Program like this when I was coming up.”
“So overdue and so needed for today’s playing environment”
“Phenomenal. This Program Will Change Lives.”
“So very well presented – Concise, Powerful, To The Point!”
What’s Inside
First Ball To Last is built to be practical, relevant, and easy to apply. Every part of the program is designed with the real emotional demands of tennis in mind.
Teaching Academy
A growing library of lessons focused on self-awareness, perspective, and the traits that matter most in tennis and life.
Daily Routines
Simple, repeatable practices that help players build emotional steadiness before match-day pressure hits.
Emotion Racket
A tennis-specific tool that helps players identify feelings and make better adjustments in real time.
Pep Talks
Short, useful scripts for moments when confidence wobbles or match-day pressure rises.
Player’s Box
Guidance for parents and coaches on how to support players without adding unnecessary stress.
Character
A deeper look at the values, standards, and traits that shape not just better players, but better people.
Meet FBTL Creator Barry Buss
Barry Buss has spent a lifetime in tennis—as a player, coach, teacher, observer, and storyteller of the game. First Ball To Last grows out of that lived experience and out of a deep belief that the emotional side of tennis deserves far more attention than it has traditionally received.
FBTL is not generic mindset content repackaged for athletes. It is a tennis-specific emotional intelligence program built by someone who understands the journey, the environment, the people in it, and the pressures players and families face along the way.
Join First Ball To Last
Whether you are trying to perform better, support better, coach better, or simply experience the sport in a healthier way, FBTL offers a new path forward.
Membership details available inside