Do You Ever Feel Expected To Win Matches?

Welcome to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with your host, Dr. Patrick Cohn. Dr. Cohn is a Mental Game of tennis expert. Do you want to improve your mental toughness for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast sessions with Doc.

Do your young tennis juniors feel under a lot of pressure and get nervous when they have to play a match they think think they're expected to win? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn and I continue this week with a question from a sports parent. We seem to be getting a lot of questions from tennis parents lately, so I thought I'd continue along this line. Naomi asks the following question. I have an 11 year old boy who plays tennis. He lost to a younger boy. He thought he should have won and that really affected his confidence. I think that thinking this is what really made him lose. He was quite nervous. His expectations are really high since he usually wins matches. How can he learn to enjoy matches when he is losing a match?

Improve your mental game quickly by visiting sportspsychologytennis.com today and claim a free tennis psychology report titled 6 unfortunately mental game Errors Tennis Players Make Between Points.

Naomi I think the first issue is with him thinking that he's expected to win. He's expected to beat this younger kid. Maybe he has expectations that he's supposed to win all the time. Maybe he feels some of those expectations from his parents or from his coach. And certainly that is part of the problem here. I see a lot of junior tennis players, they focus so much on who's supposed to win the match that it really messes with their head and causes them to have a poor mindset when they go in. For example, if your son feels like he's expected to beat these younger kids, then he's going to go into that match thinking that he has to win and that he can't lose. And I think that's one of the reasons why these players get nervous and ultimately lose the match because they're worried so much about the outcome, so much about maybe what a parent's going to say, what a coach is going to say, how their peers might interpret this. This is a real challenge for young junior tennis players because it really, really affects how they go about and play the match. So you do want to work with his expectations. I've talked a lot about helping players overcome their high in the Tennis Psychology podcast, so I'm not going to go there, but I want to address your specific question and that is how can he learn to enjoy matches when he is losing a match? I don't know if it's about enjoying the match when he's losing the match, because I think young kids have a real difficult time doing that when they're losing. I think what it's all about is him going into the match and not focusing on who he's playing across the match and whether he should beat that particular opponent or not. Things change all the time in tennis, and that means your son might have momentum and be on a roll and be practicing a lot and playing well, or his competitor might be doing the same, might be on a roll, have momentum, be practicing a lot, and that's showing in his match performance. So you never know really what's going to happen. And I encourage parents to not pay attention to seatings, not pay attention to rankings, it really doesn't matter. And instead, instill a game plan that's going to work for your son and help him go out there and just execute his game plan without thinking about the outcome of the match and that other people expect him to win the match because he's playing a younger boy. So that's the direction I would go with instead of focusing on the enjoyment. I don't think any kid wants to lose or enjoys the fact that they're down. You certainly want him to be able to battle when he's down. But the big issue here, once again, is the person across the net, his perceptions of the person across the net, and his expectation that he has to win the match. Thanks for the question, and good luck with his game.

Thanks for listening to the Tennis psychology podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. Discover the secrets to superior tennis confidence. Visit www.sportspsychologytennis.com for practical mental strategies to improve your mental game of tennis.