The beautiful story of tennis
How to see the reality? Challenge your mind!

When a player plays his game, he has certain expectations and certain beliefs about the game and himself.

He tries to be a good player – to serve well under pressure, to hit sitters under pressure or maybe even not to feel pressure at all.

I call this the beautiful story of tennis. This is a fairy tale. :)

Here’s why: when I watch ATP and WTA players I don't see perfect people – players. I see normal people with many mistakes and imperfections.

They get upset, they feel the nerves, they choke on big points, they make unforced errors, they change their minds during the stroke and miss, they make double faults on break points and match points, they start playing tentatively at the end of the set, they don't take advantage of match points, they lose matches after having a big lead, they miss “easy” sitters, they play bad with weak opponents, they are afraid of very good opponents and beat themselves by trying to play too good, …

That's what I see – that's the reality of human beings playing tennis.

Now here's where it gets really interesting: when a player realizes that he has a certain mental problem, he wants to get rid of it. And not only that – his coach or parents try to help him by telling him what is wrong and how to change that.

Now – in 90% a player is not able to do that. Our brain is wired the way it is wired. Changing our subconscious reaction to certain events is almost impossible. We react to danger automatically. We cannot force ourselves to not being nervous at the start of the match.

Some people feel more of that and some feel less of that.

We cannot force ourselves and not feel upset after a mistake. These emotions come from our beliefs and our automatic response to mistakes which may have been established since our age of 4 or 5 years old.

We can change beliefs by challenging them, but we cannot change how our brain reacts to certain situations which we stored in our brain at a very young age.

So, back to the player – when a player realizes, that he has a problem and that he cannot change it, he feels very disappointed.

He wants to be a mental winner. He wants to be a good tennis player. He wants to win important points, to feel strong and positive at the most important points in the match, he wants to be always totally motivated, and he doesn't want to feel anxiety before the match and so on.

These are all traits of tennis champions and we – coaches and parents constantly show our players (or if you a player yourself – to yourself) how they should be like.

“This is how a true champion plays match points, this is how a true champion plays big points, he ALWAYS hits a good first serve on a break point, …”

First, all those statements are not true. Champions are not perfect. They may have a better percentage of playing really good at important points, but they do falter many times.

Second, unfortunately our player believes that they are really so good and he sees, that he has some mental problems and that HE CANNOT get rid of them.

Now what is his conclusion?

That he has no chance whatsoever to get there.

This is so sad. Our mind sees only what we believe. If we believe that we are bad and that we make too many mistakes to be a good player – we will see that!

If we think that our serve is really bad, that’s what we’ll remember after the match!

We need to challenge those beliefs! They are not true.

I talked to a player recently and he had a very tough match. There was a lot of pressure and anxiety in this match. The match was stopped at 1 set all because of rain delay.

When I talked to the player, he mentioned that he was very disappointed with his serving. He said that he was nervous and felt fear when he served and he made 6 double faults. He was visibly disappointed with his ability to serve under pressure.

He lost the first set in tie-break and almost all games were very closely contested. So I asked him:” And how many serves under pressure did you HIT IN in this set?”

You can imagine the surprise in his face when he realized the truth. He probably hit around 25 second serves in under pressure. And some of them were really good.

But he doesn’t see that. Our mind sees ONLY what we BELIEVE.

That’s why it is critical to be very realistic, to hear other's opinion and to be open to it. You can change your beliefs by proving to yourself that they are not true.

His next step is to realistically observe matches of the BEST players in the world and see whether they are really so perfect or do they double fault under pressure too.

You can do that too.

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