Play Aggressive Tennis from the Start

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Do you have trouble starting the point because you're hitting weak shots? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. In this video, I'm going to answer a question from Tom, who wants to know how we can start the points more aggressively instead of being so passive. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

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Here's the question I received from Tom. He said, I have trouble executing the initial shots at the beginning of the point. I seem to be my own worst enemy on these startup points. Either I don't execute them at all or they're so weak I'm on defense the rest of the point and end up losing the point. Tom it sounds a little bit like when I've worked with junior tennis players that they go out early in the match and are playing a little tentatively. They're hitting shots, they're pushing shots somewhat, they're not hitting their full shots, they're playing it safe, they don't want to make mistakes, they don't want to get behind the eight ball early on, so they're just waiting for their opponent to make mistakes. So it sounds like that this is a mini version of that. The fact that you're pushing the ball or you're hitting weak shots early in the point means that you're trying to get into some type of rhythm with your strokes and ultimately you're not trusting your strokes there. When you're not trusting your strokes, that means you're guiding or steering the ball, for example, or you're not finishing or what we call swinging out on the ball in tennis, which is extremely, extremely important for you to be able to take your practice game to competition. Have you ever been in the warm up, for example, and a player's just creaming the ball in that five minute on court warm up. They're hitting that full shot, they're just going for it. But then they get in the match and what happens? Now they're hitting at half the power because they don't want to hit it out. They don't want to make unforced errors, for example, and now they're controlling their strokes and not swinging out on it. So that's what it sounds like for you at the beginning of the point. So the main question here is how are you going to trust your strokes from the beginning of the point and not play defensively? I think it's the mindset that you have at the start of the point where you need to play more aggressively, or instead of that conservative mindset and waiting for your opponent to miss. So it starts with your tactics. What are your tactics? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to pull your opponent off the court? For example, are you trying to get your opponent to go north, south, for example, and come up to the net and pass your opponent? So it starts with you having a solid strategy, of course, which your tennis instructor can help you with that from the perspective of being more aggressive and hitting out on the ball, you have to convince yourself that the best chance of winning the point is to swing fully. Regardless of whether you miss some shots long, for example, that's going to be your best option, is just to swing out. How do you swing out on it? Well, you probably know what that feels like when you're in practice. Swinging out on it essentially means you're swinging to finish a full finish and you're not guiding or steering the ball towards the target. For example, you're going for your normal regular shots that you would when you're in practice or when you're working with an instructor. For for example, often people don't want to swing out on the ball ultimately because of fear of failure and thus fear of making mistakes. In this case fear of making an unforced error. And thus it caused you to do a semi push or it caused you to hit that weak shot that you're talking about. So I would start in your five minute warmup and go ahead and hit out on the ball and get the rhythm going. Get that feeling going right away. And then also when you start the point, be aggressive. Feel like it's 40, 40 or it's deuce, if that's going to allow you to swing out on the ball early in the point. All right. If you want more information on mental coaching, check out peaksports.com where you can learn about our one on one mental coaching programs. And you can also jump over to peaksports.com to learn about our Tennis Confidence 2.0 audio workbook program that we recently published in 2021. In addition, if you want more articles and videos and podcasts, you can certainly subscribe to my podcast called the Tennis Psychology Podcast. It's on Spotify, itunes, Apple Podcast, Amazon podcast, wherever you like to get your podcast in addition to that, you can jump over to Sports Psychology Tennis, where you can read many more articles to improve your mental game. All right, thanks and good luck.

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