Should You Quit Tennis Due to a Weak Mental Game?

You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with Mental Game of tennis expert Dr. Patrick Cohn. Do you want to improve your mindset for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

Have you ever been up big in the match, say a set and 5:1 and ended up losing the match? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, a mental performance coach at Peak Performance Sports 10. Today I'm going to talk about how you can finish off the match strongly when you have a huge lead and stay focused at the same time. You're listening to the Tennis Psychology Podcast.

Want to quickly improve your mental game for tennis? Visit www.SportsPsychologyTennis.com today and download a free ebook titled Six Unforced Mental Errors Tennis Players Make Between Points.

Here's the question I received from Alex Yesterday. I experienced a pretty tough loss against an opponent I had won earlier this year. I was up 6151 when I had two match points. I guess I was afraid of winning, but I also started to think about the future and how nice it would be to go out for dinner and play another match tomorrow. I basically forgot to think about my game plan and how to win the match. Should I quit because of my weak tennis mentality or should I continue in the game? Alex, thanks for the question. Basically, the short answer is no. You don't have to quit because of this. You just have to improve your mindset and your ability to close out matches. This is not a reason to quit. If you love the game more than you hate the game, then you absolutely want to stay involved in the game. You have the talent and the ability. If you're up a set and five one that says you have the ability to win matches. It all comes down to your mindset and the ability to close out matches when you're leading big or when you're getting distracted or complacent in some way. First, I want to talk about fear of failure versus fear of success. A lot of athletes get that wrong. They think, well, I must have been afraid of success and then just gave the match away. Well, that's not really what happens with fear of success. You do sabotage yourself with fear of success as you get closer towards winning the match. But what is ultimately the issue with fear of success is that you're afraid of what comes with success. In this case, you're not afraid of being able to go back tomorrow and play another match. That's not the issue now. Fear of success sounds cooler, so most athletes will say, well, yeah, it must have been fear of success Fear of failure, on the other hand, is being scared of not winning, not getting what you want, not being able to advance in the tournament, not being able to go and play another match the next round. So in my estimation, it's probably closer towards fear of failure than fear of success, which is very, very rare. Now, what do you do when you're up in the match and you're leading big?

You obviously, as you pointed out, you can't think ahead. That's your first mistake, is you're thinking ahead about what's going to happen after the match, then you're going to go out to dinner and that you're going to have another match tomorrow. That's way ahead. You're getting way ahead of yourself. You have to pull yourself back and focus only on the next point and how you're going to play the next point. Secondly, you also identified you forgot about your game plan. You have to stick with the winning game plan that got you up 51 in the match. You have to stay aggressive. A lot of times players will slam on the brakes, they'll protect their lead and then thus play safe. And when you're playing safe, you give your opponent momentum. You start hitting the ball down the center, give your opponent poof balls, and now they're taking advantage of that. And now you give them momentum and you give them confidence and now they, they make a run on you. And then often that leads to you getting frustrated and that's why it went to a third set tie break. But however, I think in your case, it's just getting a lack of focus, of getting ahead of yourself and focusing too much on the what ifs. What if I win? Well, I can go out to dinner and then I'm going to play tomorrow. I think it's more of a focus issue. So how do you stay focused in the present moment? Make sure before you step up to the line to serve or before you step up for your return that you're 100% focused in the now. That means what is your routine, what is your plan for the serve? If you don't have a plan for the serve, you don't think about the type of serve or the location, then you're going through the motions flat out. So that's where it's going to start, is before you step up for the return or the serve, you have a plan of what you're going to do with the serve and what's your approach on the point, the same approach you've been using the entire match that got you into position to win. So lots of challenges here but I think you can be better with this. I teach players to be better with closing out matches depending on what the challenge is. So you have to look hard at what changed for you and how your game changed. Be able to assess that, analyze that from a mental game perspective and apply the solution so so that you can continue to play aggressive, continue to trust in your strokes, continue to stay focused in the now. Thanks for your question. Hey, if you want information on mental training or mental coaching for tennis players, jump over to peaksports.com and check out our mental coaching programs there. In addition, we have many articles podcasts videos posted at our tennis specific website called sportspsychologytennis.com so you can jump over there and get some free material as well.

All right, thanks for listening.

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.