How To Keep Cool After Missing A Big Point In Tennis?

A good read for your kids out there:

One of the most important keys to playing our best tennis is the mental state we’re in while playing the point. If a tennis player is starting the point while feeling frustrated, irritated, angry, or having other similar emotional states, he will not be able to play his best tennis.

Emotional states affect our minds and our bodies.

If the player is angry, he will not be able to think clearly and make correct tactical decisions while in a ball exchange where everything happens so quickly.

He will also feel that surge of extra energy that wants to be released.

That energy is often released through shouting, screaming, throwing the racquet, or hitting a ball with too much force.

Therefore, the player in this state is not playing his best and will most likely lose most of the points while playing in this state.

The goal of the player is therefore to maintain his ideal state as much as possible—we call this state “arousal” or “activation.”

But, as everyone has seen countless times, the number one cause for losing that ideal state is missing a shot and reacting to it negatively.

How to understand mistakes as a part of tennis is a topic for another article, but in this one I’d like to show an approach that helps the player find that ideal state again even if he becomes irritated or frustrated after missing a shot.

While Jim Loehr, a famous tennis sports psychologist, has dissected the time the player has between points into many different parts and teaches what players need to do in each part, I like to start teaching the players in small and easy-to-follow steps.

STEP 1: One deep inhale and exhale

The player needs to do one deep inhale and deep exhale after he misses the shot. I suggest that he turn away from the court facing the back fence and do one deep inhale and deep exhale where he actually feels his shoulders go up and down.

That’s all I ask of him at the beginning. He needs to practice that many times while playing practice point in regular practice sessions.

STEP 2: Win the point in your mind After the player gets used to the one inhale and exhale, I ask him to replay the missed shot in his mind but make the ball go in.

So in his mind’s eye, he must see how he actually hits the ball in the court. He needs to see the exact trajectory of the ball and exactly where it landed.

This can take only a few seconds to do, and with practice the player will get better with it and do it faster.

This method takes the player’s mind off the mistake he just made, which stops the negative emotions and also teaches him to learn from his mistakes.

These two steps are very simple to understand, and young tennis players will quickly learn them and realize how helpful they are. With some practice, this will become their habit, and they’ll be able to maintain their ideal mental state for much longer periods of time and eventually throughout the whole duration of the match. That, in turn, will help them play their best tennis for most of the match.