Does Your Tennis Player Become Nervous When In The Lead?

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 you have any tennis players that tend to go up in a match early? They get up three love, four love but then will slam on their brakes and allow their opponent to come back in the match. Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn for the Tennis Psychology Podcast. In today's session, I answer a question from John all the way from South Africa, who said this about his student. I have a student who starts his tennis match off well with good serves and his forehand is typically stronger than his backhand. But as soon as he goes up three love or four Love, he starts thinking about the end of the match and therefore loses concentration on the immediate. And his opponents will usually mount a charge to come back. How do you help him with this type of nervousness?

Improve your mental game quickly by visiting sportspsychologytennis.com today and claim a free tennis psychology report titled Six Unforced Mental Game Errors Tennis Players make between points.

John, thanks for the question. This is typically related to what I call a comfort zone in tennis. When a tennis player will get up in a match, one of the things that they do is they do start focusing too much on the outcome. And that's part of the problem is he starts thinking about getting through the match or getting through the set and therefore he's not really focused on the immediate. But often what I find in this situation is they didn't expect to be up that quickly. 3 love 4 love and typically a player will slam on the brakes, protect their lead, play more defensively. Some players will go into conservation mode where they feel like, well, this is easy, I don't want to spend a lot of energy. And then they stop playing aggressively and play a little bit more defensively, waiting for their opponent opponent to miss shots. And then when that happens, the opponent can often turn the tide, gain momentum and mount a comeback and in some cases turn the outcome of the set around totally, even though your player has a four love lead. So for me, the important part is to find out what is happening with your player when they get to for love and all of a sudden their game looks different. They go into safe mode or conserve mode or protect mode. What are they thinking about? Do they become complacent? Does your player lose focus? Do they start to protect? Do they start to think ahead? That's ultimately going to be where your questioning needs to be to find out what are the changes that are taking place. And then the second part of that is, well, how can you get your player to get back into the moment and continue to play hard, continue to play aggressively and not protect or play safe or play conservative or protect that lead that he or she has built up in that instance? So obviously you want your players to play one point at a time, one game at a time, and not really think about the score. Very difficult for tennis players because the score is being called out constantly. But you can challenge your athlete if it's a situation where he's playing protectively or conservatively after in the lead. Then you want to challenge your player to play more aggressively to stay on offense instead of go to defense or defensive play or defensive mindset. You can ask your player, for example, to maybe let's try and close out the points quickly within three to six shots. You might not even put a number of shots on it, but you could ask them as an objective to try and close out the point quickly when they're in the lead, just to keep them on offense or that offensive mindset and continue to play the way they did when they got four up. But keep in mind, you know, opponents will, if things aren't working, they'll modify their game. They'll. They'll go searching and look for ways that they can pull your player off the court or look for ways that they can start to win points and gain some momentum. So in not in every case, it's a matter of the comfort zone and your athlete protecting. In some cases it can be, well, the opponent just started to figure some things out and started to change their style or their tactics and got some momentum going on their side. Thanks for the question and good luck with your coaching.

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.