Fear of Failure in Tennis

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Do you worry about letting yourself down if you don't play up to your potential in a match? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, and in today's Tennis Psychology Podcast, I help a player named Tony overcome the fear of letting himself down.

Tatu Kohn, Tony has the following question for you. When I play, I have a fear of letting myself down because of all the time I put in. This causes me to tense up right as I hit, resulting in mistakes. Also, I hate when I don't perform with a lively pace and move my feet, but it's difficult because I'm distracted by my fears. I don't play the points with full attention, making all the fun disappear.

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Tony, you describe perfectly what happens to players when they're so wrapped up into their fears that they can't really focus in the moment. You say you don't play points with full attention or full focus, making it hard for you to have fun and perform your best, probably because you're so into or you're so focused on your fears itself. So let's talk about the fear of letting yourself down. This is another form of fear of failure. Fear of failure, I think, comes in two different categories. One is all the hard work that you put in, all the time that you put into your training, you want it to pay off and you want to play well or perform well in matches. Sounds pretty normal. Sounds pretty common, right? The other type of fear is when you're worried about disappointing others. You might be worried about disappointing a coach or disappointing parents or disappointing fellow players if you don't perform up to your potential. Often those are the two different types of fear of failure that I see in tennis with players. In your case, it's because of the time invested that you have in your game and the expectations that you have to perform your best. I think that leads to, in part the fear of letting yourself down. You say you get tight, you don't hit out on the ball, and then it's resulting in mistakes and that probably leads you to the fear of making more mistakes and then you're playing very tentatively and maybe even start pushing the ball back.

What you have to understand that it's.

Not about going out there and reaching your expectations. That, to me, is part of the problem that you have here because you put in a lot of effort and you work hard at your game, you want the payoff.

And I actually have a name for this.

It's called the payoff syndrome, meaning because there's an intense amount of emotional and time invested, you want to make sure.

That that time is well spent. What you have to understand is that.

That time well spent is about improving and getting better. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you.

Have to go out there and win every time or go out there and hit every shot solid or not, make any errors or unforced errors or double faults. That's the key, I think, is look at it more from a perspective of the time that you're spending out there. You enjoy it. Number two, it's about having fun. And number three, when you go perform, it's not all about playing up to that potential that you have. In other words, don't compare every match to the best match that you've ever played. And I suspect that's kind of what you do in your game. Want to make those comparisons that I need to go out there and play at my absolute best every time. And you know what? If you're human, and I suspect you are, that's just not possible to do. So thanks for the question, and good luck with your game.

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