Mental Tips to Close Out Tennis Matches

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, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn with peaksports.com today. In this video, you're going to learn why some players sabotage themselves when leading a match or leading a set and then eventually end up losing in a third set tiebreaker. You're watching Sessions with Doc.

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Here's what Alex had to say in an email to me recently, Alex said, I sometimes lose to players after winning the first set of the match. I may be leading 30 or 4 0, but at the end, losing in a tiebreaker, I just cannot stop giving out free points after I'm up in the match. It is definitely a mental problem. I think you're the right person to help me. How can I close out the match when leading? Well, Alex, I appreciate you saying that I'm the right person to help you with this. I have been working with tennis players for many, many years. So let's identify the problem. What is the challenge here? Often when tennis players get up in a match, they tend to start to play differently. In other words, you might not expect to be up 30 or 40 and then you slam on the brakes. So maybe you're a little bit out of your comfort zone, you're not comfortable there, and then you decide to, hey, let's just play a little safer and see what happens in this match. Or let's make it easier on myself and just wait for my opponent to miss. And that's the mindset players often get is they play a safer game in terms of their tactics and their strategy and they're not playing as aggressive as they were when they got in the lead of 3 040. The other thing that I find that happens with players too is they start to think ahead, oh, it'll be great if I can just, you know, win six zero this set. Or on the other hand, they go, oh God, if I lose this set after being up 3 or 4 0, I'll just look like a fool. I'll just embarrass myself. So there's some other things at play there that cause you to tighten up or start to protect the lead and then you go to your pushing shot or you're half stroking it or you're hitting everything down the middle. So you know where I'm going with the solution. The solution is you can't be obsessed with the score or you can't think ahead. If you start thinking ahead, first of all, I want you to refocus back back on what you're doing on the current point. That's the only thing that matters in tennis is the current point. Don't get caught up in the fact that you're 30 or that you're 40 and you're going to win the first set or the second set easily. That's not good thinking. So you really want to try to push the score out of your mind and just try to play it one game at a time. But more importantly, you have to stick with the game that got you to that point, got you to 30 or 4. 0. When you start pushing or when you start hitting it down the middle, waiting for your opponent to miss. You're giving your opponent momentum. When they get the momentum, that's how they make the comeback on you because they can sense that you've tightened up or that you're playing a little bit more cautiously or safe. So continue to play aggressive. What I tell my tennis players is try to close out the points quicker. Now don't hit winners from the baseline, but just think about instead of closing out in 10 shots, maybe you're going to try and close out the point in four or five shots, for example. That will help you be more aggressive and stay on the offense rather than go back to the defense. If you want more great tips and videos and podcasts for tennis players and tennis juniors, then visit sportspsychologytennis.com and there you'll find a ton of great tools and information to help you identify what your challenges are and give you some great tips to perform better on the tennis court. I'll see you next week.

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