Why Tennis Players Underperform in 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.

Do you perform better in practice than your actual matches? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn. Today I'm going to discuss why tennis players underperform in matches compared to what they do in practice.

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So the number one question I get from tennis players is why am I underperforming in matches compared to what I show in practice? And by the way, that's the number one reason why we work with athletes here at Peak Performance sports is to help them take their practice game to competition. So let's examine the why. Why do you underperform compared to practice? Well, in practice there's nothing on the line and you're in a learning setting, so it's okay to make mistakes. Often tennis players, once they go to matches, they worry about outcome, they worry about the score line, they worry about failing. Essentially, we put that under the category of fear of failure. Most of the time, fear of failure is based upon worrying about what others think, worry about embarrassment, fear of not performing up to your potential that you show in practice. So that outcome, thinking and worry about what others think or worry about not performing up to your potential are the reasons why you're underperforming on the court or the match court compared to what you show in practice. Now that directly leads to what's called a lack of trust, your inability to swing out on the ball fully. So you might notice that you're trying to avoid missing, you might notice that you're trying to avoid hitting bad shots, you might notice that you're semi pushing the ball or you're not fully finishing your swing like you do in practice. That's what lack of trust looks like. You're essentially playing it safe, waiting for your opponent to miss. And obviously that's not going to be the best solution for you to win matches and maybe win the matches you're supposed to win or even win the matches that you're not supposed to win because you have to come out swinging fully and trust your swing. So what's the solution? Number one? You have to understand what's the underlying fear that's holding me back from performing my best. Often it's about fear of embarrassment, fear of not playing to your potential, basically fear of failure and worrying about what others think. The second part of that is you have to learn to come out and play aggressively with trust and swing freely like you do now. That's going to be very uncomfortable in the beginning. From the first game on, you come out and swing aggressively, swing fully, because the fear isn't allowing you to do that. But essentially that's what you have to do to enable to perform your best in matches is you have to go out there without worry about missing, without worry about failing, without worry about losing, and go ahead and make your full stroke, your backhand, your full hand and be able to swing out on the ball.

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