Today’s update is at the request of viva_la_albert over at /r/tennis/.
1) Every Day Is A New Day
Yesterday you played like Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Today you might be Bobby Riggs (and Bobby Riggs has been dead for 17 years so his tennis game isn’t so great these days). The point of it is, you cannot walk out on the court expecting to play your best tennis every day. If you played great yesterday, great. Tomorrow might (or even probably will) be worse. If you played horridly yesterday, great! Today is a fresh start. Carrying expectations onto the court with you is a recipe for disaster. Walk out on the court expecting to play great and if things are a little off you quickly get frustrated. Walk out on the court expecting to play poorly and you’ll make a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, approach each day with consistency and enthusiasm to play the best you can that day with what you’ve got.
2) Find Your Peak Emotional Engagement Level And Spend As Much Time There As Possible
So that heading got a little out of hand. But here’s the thing: everyone is at an emotional engagement level all of the time on the court. If we put “completely detached and don’t care at all” at a 0, then a 10 is “McEnroe in the middle of one of his epic tantrums”. Everyone is different, and everyone has a level somewhere in that spectrum where they play their best tennis. I am a confidence player. I’ve found in competition I need a moderately escalated level to overcome my doubts and fears and play my best. Others, like Edberg, Sampras, Borg all played a very low excitation level. Find the level that works best for you and work hard to keep yourself there. But here’s a pro tip: if you think your best tennis is at an 8 you’re kidding yourself. Nobody can sustain high level tennis in a rage for long.
3) Develop A Short Term Memory
The only way that getting angry about the point you just played can help is if you are able to reach a point of rage so great that it tears a hole in the space-time continuum, allowing you to travel back through time and fix whatever went wrong. One thing the great competitors have is a short term memory. Play a point, and forget about it – just remember the score! Much as you can’t carry yesterday’s results around with you, getting upset over the last point is a sure-fire way to sabotage yourself and your level of play. Remember that Emotional Engagement Level? Getting angry pushes you up the scale, and in short order you can find yourself way higher than you’re supposed to be to play your best. Take a note out of Nadal’s book – he is a master at letting go of the past and playing the next point like it was his last. Maybe that’s why he takes so long between points – he’s busy forgetting things. Which brings us to…
4) Play Each Point Like It Is Match Point
Because sooner or later, one of them will be. And by the time it comes, you’ve had lots of practice! If you want to be a competitor, compete for everything. There are no throw-away points or games. It doesn’t matter if you’re up a set and two breaks or down a set and two breaks. Your goal is to win each and every point. Even at the professional level players have come back from seemingly insurmountably bad positions to win matches. Barring injury, in every case I guarantee that on the part of the person who was winning there was a let-up of intensity and focus. Never take your foot off the gas.
5) Consistency Is Key
Create rituals for yourself prior to your match. It can be small things, like laying your tennis clothes all out on your bed, and changing into it slowly. Listen to specific songs before you play. Have a pre-match on-court warm-up routine that you follow every time. The point is set up something that can help trigger an appropriate mental and emotional state that puts you in the best place to play good tennis. Remember the Emotional Engagement Level? If your play your best tennis at a 5 or 6, listening to Baroque period classical music probably won’t have you hitting the court in the right mood to play well. Likewise if you play your best tennis at a 2, playing “Welcome To The Jungle” with the volume on max won’t get you prepared to perform at your peak. By creating a routine that you follow every time you compete, you can learn and make adjustments. You can tweak things slowly, observe patterns and get yourself to the point where every time you take the court to compete, you are in a good mental and emotional state to do so.
Some of you might feel silly taking these steps. “I’m not playing pro tennis” or “There’s no money riding on this”. But this is your hobby, your passion. If all you wanted to do was hitting fuzzy yellow balls you could do that at a local park against a brick wall. And this much I promise you:
Nobody ever became great by preparing for mediocrity.
So go out and prepare to be great. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
