How to Focus on One Point at a Time

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How do you play one point at a time, especially when you've had some bad points or shots? In this episode, I'm going to talk about how you can play one point at a time and let go of the last point. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from Rick. He said, how do you develop the ability to play each point on its own merit and only think about the next point that you're playing and not focused on what just happened during the last points? Rick, great question. Being able to stay in the moment, play one point at a time. You hear so many pros talk about that. You hear so many instructors talk about that. Very easy to say as a mental coach but very hard to execute as a player, especially if you're dwelling on that last point. So based upon your question, I'm understanding that you tend to take that last point into the next point. And we call that process dwelling or ruminating on the last point. And that's not going to help you on the current point because what happens is you have a split focus out there. Part of you is trying to think about, okay, what am I going to do on this next point? But part of you is analyzing and judging what you did on the last point. And that split focus won't help you Play. You need 100% of your focus on the next point. All right, so there's a couple approaches here. You see pros that do some things like look at their strings or go to the towel or do something physically to help them as a trigger to let go of that last point. That's all good and fine, but you really need to address it from the mental part and what's going on in your head. So my approach is to think about what are your most typical triggers, like missing an easy short ball or missing a routine ball or hitting a ball into the net or not hitting a good passing shot, double faulting. Those are some of the common triggers that our athletes talk about here at peak performance sports when we're working with them one on one. Well, here's the thing. Those triggers are just facts. You lost the point or you hit a bad shot, however you put the emotion into that, you get frustrated, upset because you look at that shot as I'm not playing up to my ability, I'm not playing as well as I should. I should be able to hit that routine ball, I should be able to make that kill shot when I have the opportunity. So a lot of times it's based upon your expectations about how you should play out there. And then when you judge or you deem that you're not playing to that expectation, well, that's when things start to unravel and you get upset and frustrated. When you're upset and frustrated, thus you're dwelling and ruminating about that point and how awful that point was. So my approach is very specific with this is you have to understand first, what's the trigger? Second, what's your interpretation of that trigger? And all that means is what do you think about that trigger that makes it so upsetting and so frustrating to you? You probably haven't thought of it this way. But now the third part of that, which is the most important is you've got to be able to change your reaction to that trigger so you can become unlocked from the past point. Well, what do I mean by that? Let's say, let's talk about I shouldn't miss a routine ball that's sitting up, that's in the center of the court, and that I can easily get there to execute my shot. So maybe your thought process behind that is I should never miss a routine ball in the center of the court where I have the ability to set up. So once again, that's expectation based. So that's what's causing the havoc for you and causing you to dwell on the next point. So therefore, you have to change your thought process. So here's how it might go for you. That's just one shot. I'm not perfect. I'll execute it well the next time. Hopefully that changes the emotion after that miss and you're able to go on and play that next point with 100% focus. If you want help letting go of mistakes, letting go of losses, letting go of dropping sets or dropping games, contact my team and I @sport psychology tennis.com and check out our mental coaching programs. But you can also look into more articles, podcasts and videos on that website as well. Hope to see you there. Thanks for your question.

Thank you for listening to the Tennis psychology podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. Discover the secrets to superior tennis confidence by visiting www.SportsPsychologyTennis.com for practical mental game strategies to improve your tennis game.