Couldn't find a tennis coach for his son, so he built an app

Former professional footballer Martin Kolkop couldn't find a decent tennis coach for his son — and instead of giving up, he built the platform TennisCoach, which in just a couple of clicks arranges a court, a coach, a racket, and even a ride to and from practice for the child.

The story began when Kolkop wanted his son to try different sports besides football — rugby, gymnastics, athletics, tennis. But local clubs made it clear: if a child isn't willing to devote 100% of their time to the sport, there's no place for them there. “Any sport you put your child into turns both the child and you into slaves to that sport. Clubs only want to raise professionals — they're not interested in recreational athletes who just want to have fun,” the entrepreneur believes.

The turning point came in Kolkop's hometown of Prostějov, where he arranged practice sessions for his son with the children of his longtime friend, tennis legend Jiří Novák. The young, 25-year-old instructors captivated the boy so much that for two weeks straight he asked to go to the court every single day.

To turn that observation into a business, Kolkop brought in Jiří Novák Jr., who had excellent connections among young licensed coaches, while he himself took on the business side. The company Aikit Digital and entrepreneur Vojtěch Bělovský joined the project — together they built a platform that has been running since the end of April.

The idea is simple: a parent registers on the website, picks a coach (there are currently about 50 specialists in the database across Prague, Brno and Olomouc, some of them still competing at the professional level), a time, a session length, and a court. An hour of individual coaching costs 1,500 crowns, while a group session for four comes to 600 crowns per person.

A separate headache for parents is logistics: getting a child to practice and back can eat up as much time as the lesson itself. TennisCoach solves that too: through the app you can order a ride from Liftago, which will pick the child up, take them to the session, and bring them back.

Although the project started as a tennis service, the founders' ambitions are much broader — they see the same problem in other sports, including mass-participation football. The platform is now preparing to expand into football and golf, aiming to break the myth that these sports are elite and expensive, and to give single parents and casual enthusiasts with no one to play against a way in.

Romana Pavelková from the Czech Golf Federation is helping the team develop the golf side, while in football the founders are working from the understanding that regular practice three times a week at small clubs won't turn a child into a league player — meaning parents need access to individual lessons.

For Kolkop himself, this isn't his first experience building an app: he was previously among the founders of Cyou, a project that collects data from fitness trackers and uses it to give people recommendations.