How to Be Confident in Your Own Game

Welcome to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with your host, Dr. Patrick Cohn. Dr. Cohn is a Mental Game of Tennis expert. Do you want to improve your mental toughness for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast sessions with Doc.

Hey, when you step on the court and look across the net and see the look of confidence on your opponent, does that frighten you? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn for the Tennis Psychology Podcast. In today's session, I'm going to answer a question from Amy.

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Here's what Amy had to say. I'm afraid to play against opponents who look confident on the court. I see their confidence across the net from me and I feel intimidated in some way. They have something that I don't and it doesn't matter how good she actually is. I could be a way better player on paper, but I still get worried about playing that opponent. How can I get over that? Amy, thanks for your question. Pretty interesting question that you're looking across the net and evaluating how confident your opponent is and then making some type of comparison as to your level of confidence and their level of confidence and who's going to win the match. So there's a lot of mind reading going on here, I think, which means that you're making a lot of assumptions because, let's face it, a player can look confident, they can look cocky, they can look like they know what they're doing, but you don't know how they're feeling on the inside. Confidence is a belief in your physical skills and even in your mental toughness to perform what you're capable of in a practice situation. So confidence really comes down to the self and self confidence and how a player feels just because they have the facade and the look of confidence that may not be true inner confidence. I find a lot of players that are insecure or don't have a lot of confidence will try to fake it on the outside to make themselves look confident. So the first mistake you're making, I think, is you're assuming because that player in some way looks confident to you that they must be confident. And then if they are confident, then they're probably going to win. Mistake number two, I think in this situation is you're probably making some type of comparison. Well, that player looks confident, but I don't have that level of confidence. Even if they're not a good player and they have that level of confidence. Well, maybe they're going to beat me in this match. And I think that's where a lot of your anxiety and your worry is coming from, is that comparison. You're comparing yourself to the person across the net and assuming that she has more confidence than you and thus has something over you. So as you can tell, there's some assumptions being made here, there's comparisons being made here, and I think you're doing some mind reading. So what do you do? Well, just like I instruct players, don't pay attention or don't even look at your opponent's utr, don't look at your opponent's ranking, don't care where they're seated. I call it like nameless and rankless and utrless. That's the best way for you to approach a match is to not label that person across the net. And this kind of goes under that category of not labeling your opponent as looking confident and being confident. Right. I want you to step on that court and I want you to focus on what you have, your skills, your talents, your past history, what you're capable of, not what you think your opponent's capable of because you're intimidating yourself. I call it self intimidation. When you put the opponent on a pedestal in some way, it doesn't matter if that pedestal is the they have more confidence than me, they have a higher utr, they have a higher ranking. You're intimidating yourself with that information. The only thing that's important is that you go out there and you believe in your skills, your practice routine, what you've been working on, and keep it at that, not what you think your opponent has. Thanks for the question. Good luck with your game. Hey, jump over to sportspsychologytennis.com and there you can get more strategies, articles, podcasts, videos to improve your mental game. Thanks.

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