How Do I Help My Player Handle an Opponent Changing Pace?

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Do you have a young tennis player that tends to get rattled quickly when an opponent tries to change the pace, such as taking bathroom breaks? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn with another episode of the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Today, I feel another question from a tennis parent. His name is Rick. Rick says the following how do I help my tennis player adjust quickly to opponent changing pace by either taking extra long between points, going on bathroom breaks, or taking injury timeouts? The referee told me they can't enforce the shot clock at the USTA Junior tournaments. How do I help my player adjust?

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Well, Rick, let me first say that the USTA can and should enforce slow play for tournaments, and I have seen them do it in the Central Florida area. So that's something that you should check out with the regional or the local rules official and see what they can do. In any event, the other option obviously is working with your player to help your player react better to an opponent changing the pace. Now, from your question, I'm understanding that your player has some issues with this, maybe gets upset, maybe gets frustrated because the opponent is doing this on purpose and trying to rattle your player. And certainly that's an issue. So you're going to want to work with your player on how they can handle that better mentally. The first thing that I would like to discuss is this concept of helping your athlete or your player anticipate some of these challenges and how other players are going to either take extra time or be really fast in between points as well. In other words, how can you mentally prepare your athlete to be ready for that, knowing that that's part of tennis, that's part of the mind games that some of the players play out there and that your player is going to have to be ready for that mentally? So my recommendation for you is to give your athletes some strategies when they start changing the pace. If they take extra long between points, what can you do to help your player deal with that situation the next time it happens? So maybe you ask your player to go and towel off, go back to the fence, grab the towel, wipe off, take a few deep breaths, and instead of focusing on this, players trying to rattle my cage and get inside my head. Maybe you have your player focus on doing something that's going to help him or her get ready for the next point. Maybe some stretching, maybe going back and adjusting the rackets, maybe adjusting their strategy, something that's going to help them play better. That would be a better coping response than getting all upset and mad with the player taking these extended bathroom breaks or injury timeouts or taking long between points. So the key there's is just that mentally prepare your athlete by giving your athlete something to do, something to focus on when these type of things happen. In addition to that, you want to talk to your player about the psych outs and the mind games that happen out there and that the whole objective of the opponent is to pull you out of the zone, pull your player out of the zone and disrupt or disturb the tempo of the match so that they can get an upper hand. If your player gets upset, frustrated starts, you know, making rude comments, then you're giving the opponent energy. The opponent's knowing it's starting to work and it's having an effect, and that's the last thing that you want your player to do, is to show that they're upset or that they're frustrated or that they're being pulled off of their focus because the opponent is trying to change up the pace of the match. Thanks for the question and good luck with your players game.

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