Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Tennis Match Play

No matter how tough, no matter what kind of outside pressure, no matter how many bad breaks along the way, I must keep my sights on the final goal, to win, win, win — and with more love and passion than the world has ever witnessed in any performance. — Billie Jean King

That's the essence of match play. It takes guts to ante up that total effort and desire, because you might lose. Failure is never a pleasant experience.

The chance of winning, and the risk of losing, is what makes match play exciting.

In fact, people who say they don't care about winning and just play for fun and exercise are usually doing so as hedge against ever really losing.

They are the ones taking the game too seriously. They are the ones with the ego problem. They are the ones who can't take losing. It is just a game after all, and this is playful competition.

Which is why opponents don't take personally. In fact, they appreciate their opponents for testing their metal by providing good matches.

There are people who have a problem with the notion of matching one person against another in head-to-head competition. They view it as inherently hostile.

Well, it isn't, but I'm not going to explain what takes but a little thought to debunk.

Losing is a bummer. Winning is a blast. But if you have a healthy attitude (what Pete Sampras and James Blake call a "short memory") it goes away in a little while. In just minutes or a few hours. Because your relationship with yourself is solid.

If you don't like the idea of one-on-one competition, try a stroke-play sport like golf, or some other form of exercise where, IF you compete, you compete against a standard, not another human being.

Tennis is a match-play sport. And if you try to play it with a stroke-play mentality, you are not going to enjoy it much.

Then you'll be thinking of your strokes while you play, not about winning the game. Why? Because you'd RATHER think about your strokes than the game. You'd rather forget that, at the end of the day, you'll be a winner or a loser. So, when you serve, instead of figuring out cunning tactics to use on the receiver, you'll be distracting yourself with thoughts about getting more knee bend and pronation in your serve.

Boring (and, by the way, not helpful toward improving your serve, either).

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