How to Take Your Tennis Game to The Next Level

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.

Do you have trouble taking your game to the next level and maybe beating that person that is one level ahead of you or higher rank than you? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In today's Tennis Psychology Podcast, I'm going to answer a question from Riley about how do you take your game to the next level without falling into the mindset of happy loser?

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.

Riley had this to say, maybe you could give some tips or advice on how young players can go to the next level, maybe beat that person who is on that next level above them without being the happy loser, without falling prey to the tennis demons. The answer might be just keep going until it happens. But the problem with that approach is that it does not address the happy loser mentality. And if this is a real thing, then you may never win because of it. Riley, good question. I've worked with a lot of juniors that tend to get psyched out when they're playing an opponent that is seeded higher than them or is ranked higher than them, for example, and get into that mentality that, oh, you know, let's chalk this one up to another loss before they get even on the court. And that's not going to help. But it certainly applies to 3.5 players trying to beat 4.0 and 4.0 players trying to beat 4.5 players as well that you've never beaten before. I think number one, it comes down to not paying attention on the ranking, the history, the seeding of the player across the net, or it's going to be very, very hard to beat that player. Juniors that go on and they look at UTR and they look at ranking and who's beat who prior to their match doesn't work. I think it gets into their head more than anything and it psychs them out. So my first recommendation is don't go on and look at the players history, who, who they've beaten or who they beaten. And if you're in that mix somewhere, because honestly, when you go out on the tennis court, you might match up really well against one opponent, whereas another opponent you might not match up well against that opponent. So you always have to Remember that, that it's not about their history and who they've beaten or who's beaten them. It's about your skills and your strengths matching up against the other player's skills and strengths. The other thing that I tell my students when I'm working on the mental game with them is look, go out there and think of that person as nameless and ranking less. Basically. In other words, it's just another player across the net. And let's control what you can control. Ken Revizza, my late mentor and friend, used to say, control the controllables. And so focusing on the history of the opponent, the ranking of the opponent isn't relevant and it's not under your control. So try to look at it as just it's an opponent across the net. It's not a better opponent, it's not a higher ranked opponent, that opponent doesn't have a better utr. You're going to go out there and focus on what's relevant to playing that match. You know, I remember a few years ago when I went down to South Florida, my daughter was playing in, think back then, they called it a sectional or state tournament, probably 14s and under, I'm thinking maybe 16 and under. But in any event she had to play a high seeded opponent in her first round. And so this girl happened to be ranked about 12th in the state. And at the time my daughter was around a top 30 player, top 35 player. But in any event she went into the match, she didn't know anything about the opponent at all. She doesn't look it up, she didn't go and look it up. She doesn't really ask me and I probably wouldn't tell her anyways. But she went out and she played very solid, matched up very well against this opponent. The opponent had a bad day as well and so she ended up winning 6 4, 64 in that match. So later I asked her, did you know that this is a top player in the state, that she's like top 12 or top 10 player? And she said no, I had no idea. So take a page from that and try not to focus so much on who your opponent's beating, what they're ranking, seeding, UTR ranking, all of that. And just go out and focus on your strengths, focus on your game plan. Have plan A, plan B, plan C for playing that opponent and grind it out and hope you match up well to that opponent. Hey Riley, thanks for the question. And if you have a question about your mental game of tennis, you can jump over to sportspsychologytennis.com, click on Contact Us and please shoot us a question. We read them all and respond to them all. Thanks.

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