Bring Confidence To Tournaments

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Do you have kids that look like stars in practice, but they tend to choke at tournaments and Underperform? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, and in today's session I answer a question from a sports parent about his daughter who has amazing talents when she practices but then goes and chokes at tournaments and even cries when she's losing the match.

Dr. Cohn Carlos, a sports parent has a question about his daughter's tennis. My daughter displays amazing talents when practicing tennis, but tends to choke at tournaments and cry anytime she loses matches. I was thinking of ordering the Tennis Confidence audio and workbook, but not sure if it's the right one. Which is the best audio program for her to start on?

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Carlos, this is a common mental game issue for kids, and I often talk with tennis parents and their athletes about some of the challenges of choking in tournaments. Now that's a pretty broad word in.

My line of work is choking in tournaments. I don't really know what's going on. I just understand that she's probably playing more tentative, more scared, afraid to make mistakes, just not performing up to her level of ability.

And if she has great talents when she practices and looks great in practice, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to transfer over to matches. Because as you know, having great strokes and being able to hit the ball wonderfully in practice doesn't mean that you can take that and become a great tournament player. You know, I found out through experience with my own daughter that having great strokes is just a small part of being able to play great tournament tennis. In other words, you have to have the full package.

You have to have great strokes, you have to have great footwork and.

And most importantly, you have to have.

Tactics and be able to play tactics.

And be able to adjust when you're.

Playing a particular opponent that's coming at you with a strategy that you're not familiar with or that's not working on your side of the court.

So there's so many things that go.

Into playing great tournament tennis, so you don't want to look at just strokes alone.

But if you feel like she's truly choking in tournaments and not displaying those.

Talents, then you have to look at what's the underlying fear? What's the fear of failure that's driving that choking? Because often it is about fear of failure and worrying about disappointing you or maybe other people in her life. If she cries easily, that means she's.

Heavily invested, she's heavily competitive.

However, if it causes her to start losing the matches, or if it causes her to shut down in a match or at tennis, then it becomes a huge, huge problem. So one of the first places that you can start is ask her, what are your expectations when you go to a match? Do you expect to win every time? Do you expect to hit the ball great? Do you expect no mistakes? And I would suspect you can start to tweak out and find out where she's putting the pressure on herself when she starts to lose matches? Because if she starts crying when she's losing or down in a match, that tells me that for her, she has this expectation of winning. And that can become a real problem if that expectation isn't supported by confidence. So that's where I would start with her, is try to find out what's the pressure that she's putting on herself in tournaments a la her own expectations. Thanks for the question and good luck with her tennis game.

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