Does the Score Distract You in Matches?

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Hi. This is Dr. Patrick comb with the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Today I have a special guest. His name is Ian Westerman. He. Ian is a regular on the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Today he's going to help me answer a question from one of my readers. Ian is a USPTA certified pro and he's also a teaching professional at EssentialTennis.com in addition, he's got the number one tennis podcast on itunes. So be sure to go and subscribe to his essential Tennis podcast, itunes.

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Ian, thanks for joining me today.

Thank you very much for having me. Once again, Dr. Cohn, it's a pleasure to speak with you again.

I'm going to start with one question from Teo. He. He says sometimes I play very well in the first set. But then a weird thought crosses my mind. I suddenly start thinking about the future. What will happen if I win and how will people react if I lose this match? I kind of put that under result thinking, right? And this is the reason I lose a lot of matches. So how can we help Teo get his mind right in the second set?

Well, I use. Back in college when I played, I had similar mental toughness issues with having those questions in my mind, having those worries and fears in my mind. And something that I read from Vic Braden really helped me a lot. Just basically what he laid out was a concept that was totally foreign to me. It totally changed my thinking on situations like this. He basically said, you know what, it really doesn't matter that much. And that was like a revolutionary thought to me. But he spent like a whole chapter basically saying nobody really cares that much whether or not you win or lose your match. Your family and your friends are still going to love you. You, you know, nobody's going to like leave you because you. Whether you win or you lose a tennis match, looking back five or ten years from now, nobody's going to remember whether or not you won. You probably aren't either and just go out and have a good time. I assume to that you got into tennis because you enjoy it.

You.

You love to play and just go out there and enjoy it. I guess would be the first tip that I would give to him. Don't be so concerned about it. It really isn't that important at the end of the day.

And I think, Ian, this can also lead to what I call the comfort zone. In other words, okay, you play well in the first set, you have a lead in the match, and then you start thinking about the future, you start thinking about the results. Oh, can I win? And this is, I think, where players can start to slam on the brakes, get protective, and just what I call sit on the lead. Sure. Rather than continue to play aggressively and keep their. Their. Their. The pedal to the metal.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you see this in all kinds of sports, not just tennis. You'll see this. I've been watching the NFL playoffs. You'll see that in virtually every sport, when a team gets a lead or when a player gets a lead, they'll try to just protect that lead. Unfortunately, in tennis, there's no clock. You know, you don't have. It's the fourth quarter. We don't have to be super, you know, aggressive here anymore. We have the lead. And tennis, there is no time limit. So your. Your opponent always has that opportunity to shift the momentum and make a big comeback. So I couldn't agree more. It's super important to continue doing whatever. Whatever you did in the first set to win and to get that lead. You have to maintain. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself in a lot of shifting momentum kind of situations.

Yeah. And if I was working with Tio, I would also talk about, you know, what's the relevance of thinking so much about the future when you're on a current point or you're in a current game, you're in the first game of the second set. There's no relevance to thinking about what will happen if you win and how people are going to react if you lose the match with the lead. None of that is relevant. So I would want him to be able to refocus really quickly when he catches himself with that forward thinking. Rewind the tape in your head and. And get back to the current point and try to think about how you're going to execute that point and win that current game, rather than focusing so much on the outcome as well.

Yeah. And that totally reminds me of something that I've heard you and so many other mental toughness experts say over and over again, and that is focus on the process. You know, the steps that you used to. To get you to that point where you were ahead. Figure out what those steps were, what the tactical choices that you made or the shot selections that you used to get you to get you to that situation or to that point in the match. You have to focus on the process of what that was and can maintain that process, as opposed to what Dr. Cone is saying being focused on results or being focused on the outcome, which, as he also said, is not it's not going to help you win the match. It's going to very possibly help you lose it, but it can't possibly help you win it.

Great. Well, thanks for helping Tio with this question. I've been talking with ian Westerman of EssentialTennis.com and the Essential Tennis Podcast, which you can find on itunes. Thanks, ian.

Thank you, Dr. Cohn.

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