Tennis offers numerous opportunities at all levels of performance. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner, who wants to play better and better or you are an advanced player, who already has big experience in the game, you have to understand what tennis really is to make this road smoother and more enthusiastic. If you have false expectations, you will be negatively surprised many times so make sure you are an optimist with realistic view of things that you need to accept.
To improve own level of play, tennis players should focus daily on things that are within their control. Players can definitely have impact on their footwork, emotional control, changes in strategy or post-match analysis to name just a few areas. It is up to the player how much time she wants to dedicate to work with the factors that she can fully control. (Here is a great article on how to train with higher quality than your rivals). Wrong mindset combined with focusing on areas that players can’t control is on the other hand the simple recipe for failure, lack of motivation to work hard and losing more matches than expected.
There is no doubt that good competitor learns every day. On and off the court, there are many opportunities to improve own game in different areas of tennis development. It doesn’t matter if we practice with better opponent or we just watch the tennis match on TV, if we want, we can always finish activity as a better athlete. However, we have to remember that during the whole career, there will be many ups and downs and we have to be ready for both the triumphs and the painful moments. If we can deal with won tournaments but we struggle after unexpected losses in the first round, it can be really hard to continue the quest for becoming the best tennis player we can be.
There are few things that many players approach improperly because of their unreal expectations of the game. Changing the perspective is the easy solution to make difficult things more digestible and to be able to bounce back even after we get the hardest “punch” from the tennis world. Here are these areas and perspectives that we should take:
Losing – Do you like losing? I hope you don’t but better be ready for it. I don’t know the player who wins all the matches all year long and even the best players in the world have to deal with getting out of the tournament sooner than expected. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you should give less than 100% every time you play against someone with higher rank or while having some physical issues but at the same time, you shouldn’t think of one or 2 lost matches as the end of your tennis career. Accept that you are going to lose a lot of matches but these results won’t have the crucial impact on your chances to reach your goals.
Good opponent will always make you struggle – If you take part in competition with much weaker players than you are, then probably you will have an easy road to the final. In any other situation, if your rivals will be at your level or even at the higher level than your present, there is no doubt that their skills will force you to use your weaker sides and struggle to find solutions to various technical, tactical, physical and mental challenges. If you think that your performance depends solely on your game, you are wrong. Opponent has a big impact on how you feel with your game and what decisions you make, so you have to accept that to win against good rival, you will have to deal with a lot of pressure that will create uncomfortable environment.
Injuries – We all don’t like injuries. Injuries stop us from training, improving on the court and taking part in the competition so overall, it is not the most positive scenario for an athlete. Injuries happen because of different mistakes made by the players like improper physical preparation, too demanding practice sessions or inadequate nutrition but it doesn’t mean that players, who take care of their bodies, will go through their careers without injuries. The demands of the game are really high and to be able to compete effectively, players have to train daily at the highest possible level. It simply means that the body has own limits and it will go through some injuries because it is part of the process. You have to accept that injuries will happen but you have to learn from them to make sure that you prevent any injury that you can.
Acceptance. It takes guts to control own emotions and accept facts that are not easy to digest. I know that we all would like to go smoothly from point A to point B and accomplish planned tasks as soon as possible. However, tennis is an individual sport that requires strong character and ability to go forward even when the obstacles wait around the corner so if you really think about getting to the top, better start to accept losing, struggling and injuries as the part of the process.
Marcin Bieniek is a professional tennis coach. You can contact Marcin through his personal coaching website http://marcinbieniek.info. Marcin has been working with USTA, top 50 ITF and WTA/ATP players. Author of tennis book “Tenisowy Olimp” and frequent contributor to TennisPro and TenisKlub magazines. He was a speaker at International Coaching Tennis Symposium 2016 and 2021 at Hilton Head Island, USA.
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