Does Your Tennis Player Play Differently Between Pratice And Matches?

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Are you a tennis coach? And your players look completely different in practice than they do in a tournament or a match. In other words, they have one game they play in practice and another game they play in tournaments. Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn and today I answer a question from Coach Bob, who's coaching a 12 year old who's having trouble playing the same way she does in tournaments that she shows in practice. Here's the question I received from Bob. I've been coaching a girl for about six years now and she's now 12. She has a very nice tennis strokes and a lot of different weapons she can use on the court, but she practices one way and plays a tournament another way. I have brought in practice girls that are much older than her at the high school level and she can beat these players easily. But then she has so much trouble playing the same way in a tournament. One of the issues is that she has no confidence in herself. I've tried everything I could or everything I can think of to help her believe in herself. She knows that she should believe in herself but doesn't believe in herself at tournament time. It's getting so bad that her parents are thinking about not letting her play tennis anymore and that's putting more pressure on her. Do you have any ideas to help this type of player.

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Bob, thanks for your question. This is super common in junior tennis. Young kids that have great looking strokes and really have all the tools and all the weapons, they're able to play freely and confidently in practice. That's where they're most comfortable. And then you put them in a match situation and it's choke city. And that's really what it is. She's choking in matches, which means that there's a tremendous amount of pressure, tremendous amount of fear of failure for her. I'd be interested in knowing exactly how she changes her game in tournaments. Now I'm going to assume that when she gets in tournaments she's much more cautious, she's much more defensive, she's not hitting out on the ball, she's not swinging freely, basically just protecting the loss. So that tells me that there's a lot of fear of failure going on. Maybe she's afraid of disappointing the parents, maybe she's afraid of disappointing you. That sometimes can be part of the pressure package, the expectations that athletes feel about living up to what others expect of them. But you say it's a confidence issue. I'm going to say, well, it may be a confidence issue. In other words, I do believe that there's a practice self confidence and then there's a match self confidence. So certainly there can be a difference there. If she gets into a match and she starts doubting her abilities or comparing herself to other players, then certainly confidence can be affected. Whereas in practice, she may be more comfortable with everybody she's practicing against, knowing that there's no repercussions if she wins or loses in practice. Practice, it's just practice. And that allows her to stroke it freely and play more intuitively. So then the big question is, how do you get her out of this rut? Because now she's got what's called a generalization. The generalization is I never play up to my ability in matches, or I always choke in matches, or I play one way in practice and another way in matches. So when it starts to become a broken record for your player, that's when they start to believe that they just can't get it done in competition or they can't get it done in matches. So you're going to have to start moving the needle. And I don't think it's all about trying to give her belief in herself. You're absolutely right that she has to accentuate the self and self confidence. That's really important. And I encourage players that it shouldn't come from coaches, it shouldn't come from parents, it shouldn't come from teammates. It really has to come from within herself and believing in what she's got. But I think a bigger issue here is her game is changing because she's not trusting it. She's not swinging out on the ball. She's playing defensively and cautiously. And then you got to ask her, well, why is she playing defensively and cautiously? She's afraid of losing, she's afraid of failing. She's afraid of letting others down. That's typically where I see the issues being. So if that is the case, Bob, then you're going to absolutely have to address that with her and get her to start playing tennis for herself. Sounds a little bizarre, right? To get her back to playing tennis for herself. Because right now she's not playing tennis for herself. She's playing to not disappoint someone, or she's playing to make someone happy, and ultimately that's the big source of pressure for her. Remember, I'm making some assumptions here, but this is ultimately where I see a lot of the fear of failure issues with young players. So getting her back to playing for herself and her own goals and stop focusing on what she thinks others want or others expect of her is going to be absolutely key to free her up and help her trust it more in matches. Thanks for your question and let me know how it goes.

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