Does Your Tennis Player Have Difficulty Playing Serious Competitors?

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Do you have a young tennis player that can't deal with opponents that appear to be very serious or unfair on the other side of the court? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In today's session I answer a question from Dan who has a young tennis player who plays with great confidence but only when the opponent appears to be nice and fair. Here's the question I received from Dan recently said my 9 year old daughter plays with great confidence with when her opponent appears to be nice and fair. When her opponent appears to be serious, thus possibly mean or unfair, she cowers and plays with no confidence. Most girls she plays appear very serious. They are probably nervous themselves or just focused. She is terrified of conflict on the court and will not call a ball out unless it's over 6 inches out. How can I help my daughter deal with this?

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Dan, thanks for your question. I do think this is an issue for young female players who tend to be people pleasers. They tend to want their opponents will like them or they maybe have some type of fear of embarrassment issues, which basically means that your daughter might be too tuned in to the other girl's feelings and then maybe take it personally when the girl is her opponent is being really competitive or really focused out there and she probably interprets that as the girl is being really serious and mean with her. But what you have to understand is the girl across the court or she really needs to understand is the girl across the court is trying to win the match. So girls can sometimes resort and boys can resort to some tactics that might get your daughter a little unfocused or really distracted out there. But the key that I'm going to focus in on today is this idea that she can play with confidence when the opponent is nice and fair, but then all of a sudden cowers and lose confidence when she plays against an opponent that is really serious or mean or just looks focused. Really, that's not true confidence in my work. You know, true confidence needs to be based upon your daughter's experience. It needs to be based on her practice. It needs to be based on her skills, her practice, her work ethic, her training, her Game plan. Self confidence has to come from within. You certainly don't want others to affect her confidence in that way because then her confidence is prone to go up and down depending on who she's playing. It sounds like that she needs to do a better job of focusing on her side of the court and only her side of the court. Which means that she can't get into the other girl's antics and what the other girl's doing. And if the other girl's cheating, well, that's why the officials are there. She needs to get an official and let the official deal with it. She doesn't really need to say anything to the opponent other than I'm getting an official, so there's really no confrontation there at all. And she, your daughter deserves a fair match and you want to make sure that she understands that she deserves a fair match and that's why the officials are there to call the match. So how does she maintain that steady state confidence? Confidence is really based on her skills, her ability, her practice, the things that she can do in practice and the things that she's done in the matches. It shouldn't be swayed so much by other people, especially the opponent across the net. Then that becomes a real problem. And I know girls that do struggle with this, not so much from a confidence standpoint, but they get irritated and they get frustrated with the opponent across the net when the opponent is trying to get in their head and they're yelling things during the match and maybe making a questionable call here and there. It tends to get a lot of girls frustrated and then they lose focus. But certainly I would explain to your daughter that confidence comes from within. It's self confidence. It's based upon her skill set, her ability, her game plan, her past experience. And it shouldn't be swayed by how the other girl is behaving on the other side of the court. You might check out for really young tennis players or athletes, you know, 10 and younger, maybe 11 and younger, check out the confidence sports kid CD program. It's one of our youth and parent programs@peaksports.com the other thing you might look into if you have an older athlete is the Tennis Confidence Mental Toughness for Tournament Players, which is a more of a comprehensive CD program. Thanks for the question and good luck with their game.

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