About Neil Mcaffer Tennis

Discover the journey of Neil Mcaffer, a former New Zealand tennis champion and professional coach, dedicated to elevating players through expert coaching and insightful workshops.

Here you will find both a biography and the latest information regarding Neil McAffer and his activities including his forthcoming book 'Deep Down Inside'. 10 years in the making and Published 2025.

Player & Coach Profile

Neil McAffer was born in Palmerston North in New Zealand and has spent his entire life in professional tennis. He was New Zealand Junior Champion on two occasions in 1963 and 1964 and progressed to become a top ten player in the country. He represented New Zealand on numerous occasions and would have progressed higher if he had not moved to Australia for better opportunities. He played the international circuit participating in major tournaments against the likes of star players such as Roy Emerson, Tony Roche and Fred Stolle all of whom went on to become Grand Slam Champions, so he was in good company. Neil had enjoyed a fun and sometimes dazzling playing career but moved across to Spain and later retired from playing to train a number of tennis youngsters in Bilbao. At the same time (and many people were unaware of this), he also participated in the music business for a significant period, dividing his time between music and tennis. In fact his son is still in the music industry in a number of bands today in Spain as a talented musician. Neil then went from simple training to full time coaching as time progressed. He stated in May 2021:


‘Although from my playing career I had an wonderful time and enjoyed early success (enormously significant in some people’s eyes), my career stuttered after an injury when I was about 19 and I lost a lot of the confidence and belief in myself. I had won everything up until that point and I mean everything. Suddenly I realised there just wasn’t the advice or help I needed in New Zealand to propel me forward. Added to the fact there was very very little financial backing in the country and furthermore we were always in the shadow of Australia. It didn’t matter that I was the top teenage player in New Zealand when I initially went abroad, it was ‘who is this Neil McAffer?’ The reason that I wrote my self help tennis and sports book ‘Deep Down Inside’ was just as important if not more so from my time as a player as it was as a coach. I thought ‘Wow if only some tennis guy had just written a self help guide in the mid 60s on 'improving my mentality'! I could have learned so much from that from and was likely to have become a genuine world top 10 contender other than just a New Zealand top 10 player. No-one wrote such a book so I thought with 60 years professional tennis experience i'll write one myself ‘’

As a coach, he moved from Spain, firstly to Germany before he was requested to work in the UK in Yorkshire putting many young players through their paces and building a phenomenal reputation as a hard working coach with some brilliant 'out of the box' ideas. He was then asked to work in the tennis Bundesliga and moved across to Germany to coach once more. Neil has wide international experience on the A.T.P. and W.T.A. tours and I.T.F. circuits. For 12 years he was a Bundesliga coach in Germany, and private coach of a large number of top 100 ranked players. This was in addition to Davis Cup and Hopman Cup winners and Federation Cup players, Grand Slam finalists and Wimbledon and French Open Junior Champions. He is interested in coaching players already on the tour or young players with intentions of competing internationally and are serious about tennis.


Qualifications:


Trainer licence from the Spanish Tennis Federation


Experience:


Coach of various clubs in Spain and the UK. Bundesliga coach of Bayer Leverkusen and Etuf Essen (Germany). Coach of young pro's of Mittelrhein Federation ( Cologne,Germany). Private coach of following top 100 players - Anneke Beck, Alexander Mronz, Lars Rehmann, Martin Sinner, Stefano Pescosolido, and Barbara Rittner. At various times has coached Hopman Cup winner Amanda Koetzer, Davis Cup players such as Gunnarsson and Bergsstrom (Sweden), Jelen and Steeb (Germany) and Sule Ladipo (Nigeria).

Book - Neil NcAffer - Deep Down Inside

Coached Top Players

Proven Success