Practice Makes Perfect

You’ve heard this tried and true title. Practice makes perfect, right? If you could hit 100 balls crosscourt, good. 1000? Better. The more you practice, the less you have to perfect things like technique in a match and focus more on placement and strategy. Ideally, every player should be practicing enough where technique is the least of their worries during a match, other than perhaps a small adjustment from time to time, like adjusting footwork or hitting heavier topspin. But what I see in matches most is mental battles more than physical. I see it all the time; on the practice court, players do fabulously. They work hard, train hard, eat well, and do everything to set themselves up right, but when they go out to a match environment, a higher level tournament, their brains eat away at the practice they’ve built up. Thoughts. “I shouldn’t be here.” “These girls/guys are too good for me.” “I have to play really well to compete with these players.” “I can’t do this.” Mental battles are the toughest—ask anyone on the pro tour, a college athlete, or anyone who competes at a high level; tennis is tough, but the mentality needed to be a tennis player is tougher. I can’t tell you I have it all figured out—when I was playing, I had my own demons to fight, my own battles to, well, battle. 

Mental strength takes as much practice as physical practice does. Putting yourself in a match play pressure environment is hard to do without playing tournaments, so the least you can do for your mental strength is to play more tournaments. With each match, whether a win or a loss, an experience and a lesson can be made. With a coach by your side, these lessons can become valuable experiences that you then bring, as practice, to your next match situation. Other mental practices that can help tennis players include working off the court on things you know you need as an individual player. I always had very little patience on the court, so off the court, I would connect puzzle pieces. Eventually I worked my way up to making 3D puzzles that took patience and time to complete—I learned how to translate patience from connecting puzzles to the court when I needed to, metaphorically speaking, connect points together to form a winning match. Other players have different issues. Some fairly universal issues include issues with confidence. Confidence is a tricky mental aspect of the game. Of course, the more you win, the more confidence you get. The catch 22- you can’t win when you don’t have enough confidence in winning. It’s a “fake it till you make it” kind of deal here—you have to go out, no matter how scared you are, with the attitude that you will beat the player on the other side. Ideally, you’ll focus on playing the ball rather than your opponent. Practicing on court through practice can give you some confidence. Another aspect of confidence includes not looking at the draw. Sometimes players over-think their opponent’s skill. Looking up your opponent is another no-no. You never know what kind of day it will be, how you will play, how they will play, and how circumstances can affect the match. Weather, something completely out of your control, can affect a match. So can an unruly call if you let it. Mental battles come down to not only practicing but also acknowledging your faults mentally and figuring out a way of dealing with these faults. If you deny that you have any mental struggles, they will never go away, and will always haunt you on the court.