How To Stay Composed After Losing a Close Set

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.

Hi. This is Dr. Patrick Cohn with another episode of the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Today I have a special guest on the show. It's actually his second appearance. His name is Joe Dynefer. He's a master professional in both the PTR and uspta, a distinction awarded to only a handful of people in the tennis industry. Joe's also the author of seven books and more than 30 DVDs, and currently he's the owner of On Court. Offcourt.com Today we're going to talk about a question that I received from a tennis parent, Rolf, whose son appears to give up. And we'll certainly go over that question with Joe. Joe, thanks for joining me today.

Thank you, Patrick.

So another very common question that I get from my readers and my listeners is about juniors and juniors and in terms of their level of motivation, their willingness to play from behind, those type of things. So here's a specific question I received from Rolf. He said, my son practices very hard, but he gives up very quickly in matches. He's not a fighter when down. If he loses a close first set, he'll give up and not try on the second set because he's so discouraged or frustrated with losing a close first set. How can I teach him to just keep fighting when he's down?

Improve your mental game quickly by visiting sportspsychologytennis.com today and claim a free tennis psychology report titled Six Unforced Mental Game Errors Tennis Players make between points.

Once again, Joe, very common question that comes out from from parents and juniors alike.

Yeah, that's so common. And even in the pro level, it's interesting. The flow of matches, when you look at scores is very often 6, 4, 61 or 7 5, 62 or 6 tiebreaker 7 6, 6 love. And you wonder why that would be even it's a pro level, it would appear that one player is bailing out a little bit in the second set. So I don't think it's as simple as a player bailing. I think in the juniors, the aspect of one player getting discouraged can be there, especially with younger children because of the ability or inability, let's say, to focus on a long match unless they get more experience with the pros often so people don't confuse the two. It's the player who wins the first set gains confidence and they've learned how to exploit tactically their opponent. And that is a big factor when you get to higher levels of play. But I think in juniors, the parent's concern is a pretty good summary of what you see. You just see the child. A lot of them just kind of lose it out there and seemingly be disinterested.

Is it the same thing as tanking? I mean, you hear a lot about tanking. Where my interpretation is an athlete, or in this case, a tennis player will actually give up. And then at the end of the match, they can say, well, I only lost the match because I didn't try 100%. I didn't give the effort.

You know, you took the words out of my mouth. There's a funny little story here which I can share. A pretty prominent sports psychologist in this country, Jack Groppel, spoke at a convention I attended, and he shared this. And he said he did a sample videotaping of tennis players. He did sampling in this with camps over time of 100 of them. And it was kind of a little funny story. He said the vast majority of them wouldn't accept corrections unless they saw it on video. And the video doesn't lie. But he said one person out of the hundred that they filmed, whether they were half joking or whatever they said, they denied it was them. They thought it was electric photography because they couldn't believe that they ever would look like that. So people do a lot of funny things to preserve their ego. And I think you hit the nail on the head that a lot of times kids will say, well, you know, I didn't really want to play. It was too hot, I didn't feel like it. The opponent was cheating. You know, she had an attitude or he had an attitude. I just didn't want to bother. I wasn't going to stoop to their level, all sorts of excuses to allow them to lose and save face. In a lot of cultures, that saving face thing is very important. But I think the.

What's the solution? Let's talk about solutions.

This is the whole thing, you know, is, okay, what tools. This is a parent wanting to help their child. And we're addressing this publicly through your website to your followers because, you know, the idea is to share it to many, as many as possible. And to me, the way I would address this is to simplify and help the child have an understanding of what's going on out there. And I always, in working with juniors, would come up with a few key things that is surprising to a lot of tennis players. One of them is how many points are actually in a set. So they realize, hey, you know, concentrating on one point at a time, if it's a bearable length of time, is really not that hard. People in practice for an hour are going to hit a ton more balls, for example, than they will in a match. In an average tennis match, when you add up the amount of seconds, the amount of minutes that the ball is actually in play during points, people are surprised to hear that out of every 60 minutes of play, the ball is actually only in play for 11 or 12 minutes. The rest of the time is taken picking up balls in between points, on changeovers, arguing about the score, whatever, right? So that can be a good tool for the player who seemingly loses focus, gets distracted, or just doesn't seem to fight and hang in there. Because part of it is maybe wanting to have an excuse. Another part of it is that they just have simply trouble focusing over an hour or two hours. Junior tennis is not an easy thing. Oftentimes the juniors at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old are having to play two or three matches in a day. And if they're long matches, I mean, we're here in Texas and with the heat and summers and juniors, I've seen 10, 11, 12 year olds literally having to play up to six hours a day. That is not easy. The kids with the most focus generally are the ones that come out on top. It doesn't always develop the best long term gains because you want players to swing freely and learn to perfect what will be strokes that they can grow into. But the players who are mentally tenacious seem to do well in the younger age groups. Very steady, they know how to block the ball, they know how to get that extra ball back. But there is a story here for all these parents to maybe keep in mind when their younger children seem to lose because they appear to give up. To me, the priority is long term player development or long term athletic development, which you know, we know as ltad. And to me what that means is put the technique and the style and the stroking that will be for their long term growth and benefit as an athlete ahead of short term wins and losses. And that in and of itself can take pressure off a lot of kids. I always think, you know, swing big, that's fine, keep their swing speed up, but pick big targets which will allow for the greatest margin of error. Do not try to hit close to the lines and that can take a lot of pressure off the kids too. Sometimes they don't identify target areas well, sometimes they feel like, oh, you know, they get in a match and they shorten up their swings. Like we've talked in other interviews like that. There's probably more that comes to your mind. Do you want to add anything to that?

Well, I think from a parent's, you know, and I've been there, too, as a tennis parent myself, I've seen it, too. But as a tennis parent, you see kids that, you know, okay, they lose the first set by two points in a tiebreaker, right? And so it's very close, it's very competitive. And then you see your child just absolutely tank, as we've talked about, when they're in the match, they're right there in the match. So it's very difficult from a parent's perspective. Now, from a mental coach's perspective, I understand what's going on. I understand the dynamics. And for me, there has to be a separation between the first and the second set. Often kids will, you know, they'll rush right into that second set frustrated and angry, and then it snowballs so quickly downward from there. There's no. They don't sit down on the changeover between sets, try and collect themselves and say, I have a new set. You know, this is a new match. And to me, that's the way I would want to present it to. To kids, is to learn to. All right, I was in the first set. Let's process it. It was very close. It could have went either way. You know, this is competitive. This is why I play very tight matches. This is fun. But put it behind them and say, let's just start afresh. Let's get into this new set and not carry the monkey on the back. Because what they're doing is they're carrying the frustration, the anger, the disappointment from losing, from battling so hard in that first set, but. But coming out short, and they're taking that into the second set, like. Like they're trying to play with a monkey on their back, and it's just impossible to play that way. So to me, that's the first step or one of the first steps, Joe is. I think there has to be that separation and starting afresh, starting new. Like, teams can come out in the second half of a football game or a basketball game and say, all right, new game, you know, new half. But often, you know, even golfers, you know, new nine. Okay, I had a bad nine, but it's a new nine or it's a new round. They can come out there with more of a fresh perspective or a gymnast.

Where they have several different events they have to be in and so forth. Or track. When you were speaking, it made me think of, okay, sounds good, makes sense. But how can we get the child out there in the match to remember that? And I can share with you, some parents may like this system, something that I came up with, which I used with my own daughter because when she was playing in like 10s and 12s younger on, there was a checklist of items that she needed to remember. And you don't want to overload them with too many things. And we started off with the typical, have a piece of paper or a little notepad and look at it on changeovers. But then even though that piece of paper was there, she. She wouldn't remember to look at it. I mean, that probably rings true for a lot of parents. Kids, they see, well, gosh, there were three things on there. But if you don't look at it, how does it help you? So what we did is we would print it out, handwriter, type it up nice and big colors, put smiley faces, whatever they want to decorate it with, laminate it, grab a couple of rubber bands and put it around their water bottle. Because if there's one thing they go to on changeovers, it's going to be the water bottle. And on the water bottle, if it is that specific issue that the parent finds, okay, there's a pattern here. You know, some kids don't have that pattern. Many will, you know, and maybe their cue word is think Rafa for Rafael Nadal, because he is absolutely, you know, one of the most tenacious fighters that's ever been on a tennis court or whatever way that they need to hear it or read it to remind them, you know, if you lose the first set, take a deep breath, start again and take it one point at a time. You're out there to have fun and compete. Whatever it is that helps that individual child. At least that system for us worked very well because after that, when we started laminating, putting it on the water bottle every single match, and she played many matches over many years, she was reading those notes.

Yeah, I love that technique. As a matter of fact, I think you did a video on that.

I put it in one of my videos that's called World Class Junior Tennis. A series of different. We did like mental, like details, you know, the mental side right at the end of a DVD that covered technique issues. And also drills for fairly high level juniors in the 12 to 15 age range.

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, Joe, I think just that little reminder, you know, to, you know, take a deep breath, take an extra minute, process it, let it go, try and start afresh. I think just little reminders like that can make a huge difference for a player.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, another topic for another day is, you know, so after the match, how do the parents relate with the children? I was just on the court today and this may be food for thought for another day, but I teach still a few hours a week here in Dallas and the dad was out there and he's got his 13 year old son with him who's an absolute perfectionist. Right. And I'll just share this, this one little thing because how to take pressure off a child instead of adding it on, which we all know that can happen. What happened was I brought out a racket with no strings and I had his son just work on movement and swinging freely. And that this little thing made such a huge difference immediately, just taking the pressure off. So there are often little tricks, you know, that a good tennis parent can learn to help their child because we all love our kids and that's the goal is just help them feel good about themselves and reach whatever their potential may be.

Great. We'll end it there. Excellent suggestions as always. I've been speaking with Joe Dynefer, master professional in the PTR and USPTA and owner of Encore Off Court. Thanks a lot, Joe.

Thank you, Patrick. It's been great talking with you.

Thanks for listening to the Tennis psychology podcast with Dr. Patrick Cohn. Discover the secrets to superior tennis confidence. Visit www.sportspsychologytennis.com for practical mental strategies to improve your mental game of tennis.