About
A short list of West LA tennis coaches, invited one by one by someone who has played with them.
I’m Paul Cochrane. I’ve been coaching tennis in West LA since 2010 — Venice, Mar Vista, Culver City and Brentwood, mostly on the public courts you already know. I also run The Tennis Garage, a racket stringing shop in Mar Vista, which means a fair number of the people playing tennis around here come through my door sooner or later.
For years, the way people found a coach around here was the same: ask someone at the courts, get a name, hope it worked out. The coaches were out there. Some of the best I’ve ever hit with teach within three miles of Mar Vista. The hard part was never supply — it was knowing whose name you’d been given, and whether the person giving it actually knew.
So in 2020 I started keeping a list. Coaches I’d been on court with. People I’d send a friend to without thinking twice about it.
That list is this website.
Coaches can put their name forward. It isn’t how anyone gets here.
Every coach on The Tennis Plan is someone I’ve been on court with — hit with them, worked alongside them, or watched them run a lesson. Not a phone call, not a CV. On court.
I’ve strung rackets for a lot of them too, which is its own kind of vetting — you hear which coaches players stay with, and which ones they quietly stop mentioning.
That’s the whole bar, and it’s deliberately hard to clear at scale. It’s why the list is short: twenty-eight coaches across nine West LA neighbourhoods. A national directory will show you two hundred and let you sort by price. I’d rather show you twenty-eight and be able to tell you why each one is on here.
The badge on a coach’s profile means I’ve been on court with them, and that I’ve confirmed the courts they teach at and any credentials they list. It isn’t a self-reported field.
It also means my name is behind them. If a coach on this list disappoints you, that’s on me — I’d want to hear about it.
Anyone in West LA looking for a coach, whether it’s your first lesson or your fiftieth. The coaches here work with beginners, juniors, adults coming back to the game, and players preparing for leagues and high school tennis.
Lessons run on public courts across the Westside — Penmar, Mar Vista Rec, Culver City High, Stoner Park, Barrington, Marine Park, Clover Park and others. Private lessons run from $85 to $180 an hour, group sessions around $50 a player.
You don’t need an account to look. Every coach, rate and court on this site is public. You only sign up when you want to book.
You can put your name forward atcoaches.thetennisplan.com.
Being straight about what happens next: it doesn’t put you on the list. I add coaches I’ve been on court with, so what an application really does is start a conversation about getting on court together. If we’ve already crossed paths somewhere in West LA, say so — that’s the shortest route. Or email me atinfo@thetennisplan.com.
Or find me at The Tennis Garage in Mar Vista — I’m usually there.