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Ask any tennis pro out there how important the mental part of the game is and they’ll tell you it’s at least 90%! Tennis players who consistently win do so because they are in sports psychology terms, mentally tough. That is, they have the ability to: Effectively handle the pressure of competition; Bounce back from missed shots, double faults and lost tie-breakers; Focus on what’s important and block out the opponent’s attempts at gamesmanship, the crowd, lousy court conditions and tough weather; Avoid getting psyched out or intimidated; Maintain self-confidence and a positive attitude even when your back’s to the wall; Etc.

How about you? Do you have trouble closing out your matches? Does the sound of the grass growing distract you? Are there certain opponents who “own” you, who you just can’t seem to beat even though you have a better game than them? Do you get so down on yourself after a double fault, blown put-away or lost lead that you mentally take yourself out of the match?

If your answer to these questions is a “yes”, then perhaps it’s time for you to add some sport psychology tools to your shot selection and match strategy. If your head is the weakest part of your game, if you have the reputation around your club or team as being a “total head case” then listen up!!! So many tennis players would rather work on their strengths than focus on their weaknesses. It’s much more fun to do things that you’re good at than to practice things that you do poorly. It seems so much easier to keep running around that backhand than to struggle with finally learning how to really hit it consistently hard and with topspin & accuracy. Unfortunately your game is only as strong as its’ weakest link. You can’t get better as a tennis player unless you commit yourself to finding your weak links and systematically working on them. While this may not be any fun, it’s by far the smartest and fastest way to improve. So if your head breaks down before your body, it’s time to get serious about sports psychology.

If you think of yourself as a “mental weakling”, then what real chance do you have of turning this part of your game around? Martina Navratilova, one of the best female tennis players in history and one of the mentally toughest athletes across all sports, male or female had a serious reputation of being a mental midget when she first joined the tour. She was the master of the choke and self-destruction, regularly stealing defeat from the jaws of victory. She was her own worst enemy. However, she was also pretty smart. She knew that her talent, conditioning and shot selection were totally worthless as long as her head was a mess. So she worked on that weakest link and the mental toughness and sport psychology skills that she developed took her to the top of the pro game.

Will sports psychology do the same for you? What do you think this is, a Disney movie? Get real! Sport psychology is not a magic pill that will take a 3.0 game and instantly turn it into a 5.0 one. You know that nothing comes that easy when you’re training yourself to become a champion. Furthermore, not everyone is destined for tennis greatness. However, regardless of the level of your game, a little mental toughness training will, definitely raise the caliber of your play several notches and save you the heartache of the following personal story.

As a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts I was the #1 singles player. Our season built up and culminated in our conference championships, by far the one, most important competition of the year. The tournament was broken into six singles divisions corresponding to your position on the team. I fought my way all the way to the finals in the #1’s bracket. In the championship match I had to play a 6’ 5”, hard serving giant from New Hampshire who had easily kicked my butt two weeks before in a dual match.
On this particular day, however, I owned him! I was playing out of my mind. “In the zone” as they say. I’m sure you’ve heard that you’ll always play your very best tennis when you’re “on automatic”, loose, relaxed and not thinking. It’s amazing how easy this game is and how well you’ll play when your head is in the right place….and mine was! I was in another world, focused on one point at a time, one ball at a time, in the “now” of the match.

Concentration is the key to athletic excellence. Do you know where your focus of concentration needs to be for you to play your very best? Choking and poor performance is always a direct result of having the wrong kind of focus. When your mind “time travels” and you visit the “past” and/or the “future” before and during your match you will get yourself into big trouble. Being in the “past” is holding onto a mistake, double fault, lost game or bad call long after it’s happened. Being in the “future” means you’re keeping score in your head and thinking about the next game, set or match, or entertaining the “what if’s”(what if I double fault? What if I choke? Etc). If you get mentally hung up in the past or the future while you’re playing you can kiss your tennis game good-bye!

I won the first set 6-3 with aggressive, well-placed shots, hard accurate serving and perfectly timed assaults on the net. I continued this brilliant play into the second set and built up a 5-2 lead in our best-of-three set contest. It was now my serve for the conference championship and my opponent hadn’t been able to touch my serve the entire match. I had 17 aces to this point.
Good tennis, as you probably know is something that comes directly from being loose and relaxed. If I could give you sports psychology’s greatest secret to playing out of your mind, this is it. Play loose. Be relaxed. It’s not rocket science and it’s not profound, but it is where peak performance on the tennis court comes from. When you’re loose you’ll play your own game. When you’re uptight, some hacker will be masquerading in your shoes!

As we changed sides at the 5-2 break, I happened to glance off the stadium court and my eyes settled on the awards table that the tournament officials had begun to set up. On it was the very huge trophy that I would be bringing back with me to UMass for winning the conference championship. For the first time all day I started to think about winning.

One of the paradoxes in tennis is that if you really want to win, you can’t think about winning. You’ll always play the best tennis of your life when you have nothing to lose and when the outcome of the match is the furthest thing from your mind. If you’re too preoccupied with the outcome or worried about getting upset by a lower seeded player, there’s a great chance that nightmare will come true.

As I got ready to serve I was thinking, “You’re only 4 points away from winning! Hit a big serve! Go for it!” You play your best tennis when you’re not continually coaching yourself through the match, but on automatic and not thinking. As I thought that I tightened up and sent my first serve 6 feet out. That certainly got my attention. I continued to think about winning sent my second serve into the bottom of the net, Love-15. As I stepped over to the add side to serve I kept telling myself I was so close and all I needed was four more points. “Go for it! Big serve! Hit an ace!” I urged myself as I started trying too hard. I double faulted again. As I stepped back to the deuce side to serve I started thinking, “Oh my God. What if I blow this? What if I choke? Remember what happened two weeks ago?” (I am now starting to time travel worrying about the outcome, the future, and thinking back to a past loss. At the time I was not a sports psychology wizard).

The problem with worrying about the outcome is it will get you playing tight and tentative. This is exactly what started to happen for me. Worried about blowing my lead, I unknowingly changed the aggressive game that had gotten me the lead in the first place.
There’s a cardinal rule in tennis: Never change a winning game. Always change a losing one. If you’re doing something and it’s working keep doing it!

Instead of going for a hard serve I hit a wimpy one over, just to get it in. My opponent moved in on it, took it on the rise and blew it down the line past me for a winner. Triple break point! To make a very long and painful story short, he broke my serve to go to 3 games to 5. Held his serve, broke me again and then went on to win the second set 7-5. By this time my mental toughness was non-existent. I couldn’t get my focus or confidence back and I went on to lose the last set and match 7-5.

Perhaps you can see yourself in this story. Maybe this tennis tragedy has befallen you a few too many times. If that’s so, don’t despair! You too can begin to build your mental muscles so that these kinds of choking experiences fade into the distant past. Keep training hard physically and begin to put some of your energy into training your mind. Sport psychology can help you do this. It can give you and your game the competitive advantage.