Tiger Top Spin: Get to Know Goodman: Inside the coach building Mizzou tennis from the ground up

The Missouri Tennis Complex was quiet when Robin Goodman and I began walking through it.

There were no dual matches underway. No crowd gathered around the courts. No pressure of an SEC opponent on the other side of the net.

Instead, there was time to talk.

As we walked around the complex, Goodman pointed toward courts, discussed his players and spoke about the program he is beginning to build. The conversations moved beyond tennis, though. They went back to England, to a childhood spent following his mother Karen Goodman to coaching sessions and eventually to a life that has taken him from rural Cambridgeshire to Drake, Baylor, New Mexico, Pacific, Tennessee and now Missouri.

For Goodman, who is entering his first season leading the Tigers, the path to Columbia started almost as soon as he could walk.

“My mom was a coach,” Goodman said. “She used to coach junior players back in Cambridgeshire, and ever since I could walk, I had a racket in my hand.”

Tennis was not simply something Goodman discovered. It was part of his family.

His mother coached. His father Mark Goodman played badminton at a high level and coached the sport. His grandparents played tennis. Growing up around those influences made the game a natural part of his life.

“When I started playing, I really enjoyed it and stuck at it,” Goodman said. “I thought I was pretty good, and so I made the most of some opportunities that came up.”

Goodman grew up in Littleport, a small village north of Ely in England. He describes the area simply.

“Really, in the middle of nowhere,” he said with a chuckle.

That rural upbringing eventually led him to the Hills Road High Performance Centre, where he began working with several coaches and developing his game at a higher level.

One coach in particular left a lasting impression.

Sue Rich invested heavily in Goodman and the other players she coached, helping develop his game while teaching him lessons he would eventually carry into his own coaching career.

Goodman said the most important lesson he took from his coaches was not a specific drill or technical philosophy.

It was the importance of work and focus.

“There’s lots of different types of drills and different exercises you can do on the court,” Goodman said. “But if you do a bad drill with focus and work hard at it, then you’re going to get better. If you do a good drill and you don’t work hard and you don’t have focus, you’re not going to get better.”

That philosophy has followed him throughout his career.

“The motivation and drive to improve every day is more important than anything else,” he said.

Eventually, his own playing career brought him across the Atlantic.

Goodman arrived at Drake in 2010, entering a recruiting process that looked significantly different than the one he now oversees as a Division I head coach. There was no UTR. No World Tennis Number. No social media presence connecting recruits and programs across the world.

Instead, much of the process was built on relationships and conversations.

A friend already on Drake’s team spoke positively about Goodman to the coaching staff. The Drake coaches began calling Goodman and his parents, and those conversations helped him become comfortable with the program.

He committed to the Bulldogs and headed to Des Moines.

At the time, Goodman admits he barely knew where he was going.

“When I got to Des Moines in my freshman year, I probably couldn’t have pointed it on a map, to be honest,” Goodman said.

What he found was an experience that would shape the rest of his life.

“I had the best four years,” Goodman said. “One of the best four years of my life. It was one of the reasons that kept me in college tennis because I loved being a part of a team, and I didn’t want to leave and lose that.”

Goodman became one of the most successful players in Drake history, but when discussing his individual accomplishments, he quickly shifted the attention back toward his teammates.

He credits the environment around him and the standards his teams created together.

As a freshman, Goodman learned from team captains. By his senior season, he was one himself.

That experience taught him one of the most important lessons he would later bring to coaching: Leadership does not always come from authority.

“You’re a teammate,” Goodman said. “I had to learn how to lead within a group of people when you’re not in an authoritative position.”

Today, that lesson influences how he views leadership within his own program.

“A lot of leadership is about managing people and understanding their perspectives and why they’re doing the things they’re doing so that you can just help them,” Goodman said. “Leadership is really a form of help.”

Sometimes that help comes through praise. Sometimes it comes through accountability.

For Goodman, the reward comes when he sees growth.

“There’s nothing more rewarding than if you can have a positive impact in someone else’s world,” he said. “Whether that’s on the court or off the court.”

Following his senior season at Drake, Goodman decided he wanted to learn from the best coaches possible.

So he started calling.

A lot.

Goodman said he reached out to national championship-winning coaches throughout the country looking for an opportunity to volunteer.

Eventually, Baylor gave him one.

Working under the Matt Knoll and his Bears’ staff gave Goodman his first major opportunity to experience coaching at the highest level of college tennis. During his two years there, Baylor reached the NCAA semifinals and spent time ranked No. 2 nationally.

Goodman was soaking everything in.

“The more I did it, the more motivated I got to see how far I can take it,” he said.

After Baylor, he joined Ben Dunbar at New Mexico, spending four years helping build the Lobos program. Goodman then became the head coach at Pacific, beginning one of the most challenging stretches of his career.

He took over a program with just two players.

It was also the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Goodman spent much of his time in a room, on the phone, trying to recruit an entire roster without traditional visits or the ability to regularly watch recruits in person.

“It was a real challenge,” he said.

The challenges did not stop after the roster was built.

Goodman said the program’s culture initially was not where he wanted it to be. Building the right roster meant more than finding talented tennis players.

He needed people who understood what it meant to be part of a team.

That can be difficult in an individual sport.

“Unless you’ve been shown how to be on a team or you’ve been around a team a lot, you don’t really know,” Goodman said. “You don’t really know how to cheer for someone else or care for someone else.”

The experience shaped Goodman as a head coach.

It also helped him understand what he wanted a program to look like.

After a successful run at Pacific and the 2023-2024 WCC coach of the year award, his next stop at Tennessee offered another perspective.

Goodman moved from coaching men to women and joined a program that had reached the Final Four. Working under Tennessee coach Alison Ojeda, Goodman said he saw a culture built around something he deeply values.

The person came before the player.

“She resembled everything that I believe in,” Goodman said. “Being a people coach first.”

That idea remains central to his approach at Missouri.

When Goodman talks about recruiting, his first answer is honesty.

He wants recruits to understand both the positives and negatives of joining a program. Once they arrive, he wants that same honesty to continue.

Players should know what they are doing well and what they can improve.

But Goodman also understands that college represents a major transition, particularly for international players leaving their homes and sometimes their countries for the first time.

“It’s a part of our mission that they leave here better than they came,” Goodman said, “as a person and a tennis player.”

That philosophy is already being tested with a roster unlike most in the SEC.

Missouri is young.

The Tigers have seven freshmen, one sophomore and one upperclassman.

But in his first weeks working with the roster, Goodman said he has been pleasantly surprised.

“I have been blown away,” he said.

He expected to spend much of the beginning of the semester establishing accountability.

Instead, he has seen players arrive on time, prepared and ready to work.

“Not a single girl has been late,” Goodman said. “They’re wearing the right clothes every day at practice. There’ve been no issues.”

The team also recently spent time together at a retreat in Mexico, Missouri, where the players participated in activities designed to strengthen relationships away from the court.

For a roster with so many new faces, Goodman believes those relationships are essential.

But while Goodman is responsible for establishing expectations, he does not want the culture to depend solely on him.

As we talked throughout the complex, one of the clearest themes in our conversation was his belief that leadership has to belong to the players.

Each member of the roster has an area where she is expected to lead.

Sophomore Alex Ackman, the team’s lone returner, is responsible for leading warmups before practices. SMU transfer Millie Skelton is responsible for cooldowns, bringing the team together after practices and leading stretching.

The assignments may sound simple.

The purpose is not.

Goodman wants every player practicing leadership.

“All of the players on our team have a role on the team,” Goodman said.

His goal is to create a culture that continues even when coaches are not present.

“Eighty percent of their world happens when they’re not around the coach,” Goodman said. “What are you doing when no one’s watching?”

That question may ultimately define the foundation Goodman is trying to build.

Missouri’s players will soon have the opportunity to test that foundation in competition. The Tigers are scheduled to make their first appearance of the fall Sept. 25-27 at the Husker Invitational.

The event will be the first chance for Goodman to see his group compete as Missouri tennis players.

Still, Goodman does not define success solely by results.

He believes teams can win matches the wrong way and lose them the right way.

Instead, Missouri will evaluate itself through the values Goodman, associate head coach Manny Raga and assistant coach Bronte Murgett spent months developing before the team arrived.

Those values include gratitude, curiosity, integrity, striving for excellence and competing for every ball, drill, match and point.

Goodman said those principles should provide the standard regardless of the final score.

“If we put everything out there and gave it all as a team, and we fought together, and we were striving to be as good as we could be, and we competed for every ball and put it all on the line, that’s success,” Goodman said.

That will be important as Missouri eventually enters SEC competition.

The conference presents one of the deepest environments in college tennis, and Goodman knows his young roster will face challenges.

But right now, his attention remains on building.

That includes building relationships beyond the roster.

Goodman repeatedly returned to one word during our walk around the complex: community.

He believes Missouri tennis cannot reach its long-term vision alone.

“We need the community,” Goodman said. “I don’t know if we can reach the end vision without the community.”

His plan is not simply to ask people to show up for matches.

He wants the program to first become visible throughout Columbia.

The team is promoting run clubs, participating in clinics and planning community service, including work with MU Health Care. Goodman wants people to know the players before they ever walk into the complex for a match.

“We need to do things for them first,” Goodman said. “We need to show them that we’re worth getting behind.”

Goodman, Raga and Murgett are working together on that effort.

Goodman described their relationship as open and fluid. They communicate constantly, share responsibilities and discuss nearly every aspect of the program together.

The hiring process was extensive because Goodman understands how important his staff will be to the future of Missouri tennis.

“One wrong coach in, and all of a sudden, it doesn’t matter what players you’ve got,” Goodman said. “It can all fall apart.”

He believes he found the right people.

Murgett understands Missouri from a unique perspective as one of the most accomplished players in program history. Raga brings experience as a former head coach and from his time working with nationally competitive programs.

Together, the staff shares a belief that Missouri can become more than simply another team in the SEC.

For now, though, Goodman is not rushing toward the final destination.

As we finished walking through the complex, the vision felt less like a prediction and more like a process.

The coach who grew up in a small English village has spent his career moving from one program to another, collecting lessons from every coach, teammate and player along the way.

Now, those lessons have brought him to Columbia.

The courts will eventually fill. The Husker Invitational will provide the first look at this new group. SEC competition will arrive soon enough.

But before Missouri can become the program Goodman envisions, it has to learn how to become a team.

And for Goodman, that work has already started.

It started with showing up.

With working hard.

With focusing on the details.

With learning how to lead.

With competing for every ball.

Columns and Courts will be back Wednesday and will dive into the schedule release for Mizzou Tennis Fall schedule. Tiger Top Spin will return next Monday with more insight on Mizzou Tennis.

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