Operation Doubles Tennis: Sharapova defeats Kudryavtseva at the French Open

Second seeded Maria Sharapova advanced to the round of sixteen at the French Open today with a 6-1, 6-4 defeat of Alla Kudryavtseva in a little more than an hour.

After the match Sharapova summed it up pretty well, I thought, in an interview with NBC. She characterized her performance as partly good and partly bad. She said the bad part was that she "had a big letdown" after the first set, during which she made many unforced errors.

I note that she didn't beat herself up about it, as if having a letdown is some sort of sin. The problem was that this was a big letdown, one that let Alla into the match and could easily have cost Maria the match.

I recommend her attitude to everyone. Letdowns happen. We can't avoid them. They are genetically programmed into the brain's hard wiring. You WILL have a letdown after any pressure-packed moment. That's Nature's way of restoring the nervous system to normal after a pressure-packed, tense moment.

This reflex causes problems in tennis matches though. Typically, after you win the first set, you have a letdown at the beginning of the second. There are other times when letdowns naturally occur during tennis matches as well.

The key to success is in knowing this and recognizing a letdown when you're having one. Then you can do something about it. There are ways to minimize a letdown, to minimize the bad effects of one, and to get out of one by stoking the fires of your intensity through focus on some short-term goal. I give some tips on how to combat letdowns in yourself and exploit them in your opponents in this tennis match play lesson on Letdowns.

Sharapova's letdown was so bad that her second serve was way off, sometimes to the wrong service box. And once she let a ball in play hit her before landing out!

Alla went up 4-1 in the second set. But then Maria won the next five games.

Yet there was no turning point in this match. Somewhere between 1-3 and 3-3 you noticed that something had changed. No more unforced errors, which had been associated with late contact.

Psychologically I think there was a turning point for Sharapova. I sensed it when she started double-faulting. It got to the point when the commentators and I thought, "Oh-oh, here comes another Dementieva style double-fault attack. It was clearly getting psychological and not just due to a shoulder problem.

But I got the impression that, at this point, Sharapova just refused to choke, that she simply disdained to let herself think, "Oh no! I'm gonna start double-faulting like crazy!"

Right, that's stupid. Your brain thinks stupid stuff at a moment like that, so tell it it's stupid and don't listen to it.

She seemed to get a little ticked off at herself for thinking rot. Whatever, the double-faulting stopped. The unforced errors stopped. And, though she didn't play exceptionally well from then on, she played good tennis, well enough to run the next five games and win.

Good for her. Nicely done. It isn't easy to push an opponent back out the door after you've let them so far into a match.

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