Helping Young Tennis Players Manage Losses

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Do you have a young tennis player that is a very confident athlete but all of a sudden lost some matches and now is second guessing himself? How hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In this episode, I'm going to answer a question from a tennis parent about how this athlete can get back on track. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from Sharma. She said, My 14 year old son used to play very confidently. He's had some tough losses as of late and now has begun to second guess his game. He is playing with fear. His practice and lessons look great, but he's not able to transfer that practice to matches. What can we do? Sharma? This is very, very common for young tennis players. When they have a streak of losses, they start to question their skills. I would think that he has somewhat fragile confidence. So fragile confidence is this notion that I'm only as good as my last match. If I won or lost, I'm only as good as my last set. I'm only as good as my last game. Maybe even so fragile, I'm only as good as my last point. So let's start with a notion that your son's maybe been playing for four, six, maybe even eight years. I know kids start early today. I want you to focus more on what I call long term stable confidence. And that's really what he needs. Just because he's had some matches go the wrong way doesn't mean he should throw all that confidence building out the window. And that's what happens with athletes is they tend to throw it all out even though they've been playing for four, six, eight years. If they lose, it's like all of a sudden I don't have it. So you want to impress upon him that he's been playing for four or six years and that confidence comes from four or six years of play. Now to your issue or to your point about his practice and his lessons look great but then he's not taking it to the match court. That's another challenge that we deal with every day here at Peak Performance Sports helping tennis players take their practice game to competition more readily. Now that's a Different issue. If he's playing with fear, it's out of fear of failure. He's afraid to lose, he's afraid to let down you. He's afraid to let down a coach. Maybe he has some fear of not playing up to his potential, for example. So you got to dive in there and find out what's so awful about losing the match. Is he afraid of disappointing others? Is he afraid of not playing up to his potential? You have to find out what the specific fear is and address that fear head on. That's super important for tennis players because what's happening is because of the fear of disappointing others, he's probably not swinging out on the ball, he's probably not finishing his strokes. And then therefore it looks like he's not stroking it as well. And then of course his opponent is going to take advantage of if he's giving moon balls or if he's semi pushing it back, his opponent is going to take advantage of that and thus that's going to lead to a loss for certain. So the other part about being able to take his practice game to competition is he's got to start swinging out on the ball. And I recommend that he does that right from the get go in his five minute on court warmup, that you have him go out there and swing freely, swing fully, swing out on the ball like he does in practice, get that feeling going right away and try to carry that into the first game or two so he can start that rhythm and start it going right from the get go. Hope that helps. If you want more information about tennis psychology or the mental game of tennis, jump over to Sports Psychology Tennis and there you can read more articles. You can listen to the podcast, of course, and watch some videos we have on the mental game of tennis. In addition, we just produced a brand new program called Tennis Confidence 2.0. It's our revised Mental Game of Tennis program. You can check that out@peaksports.com all right, thanks for your question and good luck.

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