Your Emotions During a Tennis Match

Everything you do has a moral effect on you and everyone it relates to. That is, it affects morale.

So, when you're down, never let it show. Do feel what you feel, but it's private so keep it to yourself. Be like birds: they can be so faint they're one second from dropping dead, but, to hide their weakness from predators, they still manage to look fit as a fiddle. When you're dog tired, put a spring in your step. When you err, make light of it.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
— Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Nonetheless, the surest way to show emotional weakness is to lie about your feelings by pretending you don't have them. For one thing, doing this is self-delusion. Furthermore, your adversaries just see right through the charade and smell blood.

Your feelings aren't "right" or "wrong," and you cannot control or change them. All you can control is your actions.

For the most part, it's best to keep your feelings to yourself on a tennis court. But many people confuse that with repressing your feelings.

Repressing your feelings is just a lie that buries them in the subconscious, where they mushroom unchecked by any limiting influence and where they rule your behavior like an unseen puppet master. So, know/own them instead. Let them remain in the conscious layer of your mind, where you are aware of their influence on your behavior and can temper it with reason and good judgment.

This is why some players show anger without harming their play or boosting the opposition's morale. Indeed, if you feel it, there's no real harm in showing anger now and then. So long as it's in a mete amount and there's no chagrin in it.

I really don't mind the shows of emotion, banging your racket, getting upset in the moment — that's just adrenaline. But that constant feeling of hanging your head, walking a little slower, just being dejected. You're showing your opponent that you're ready for him to beat you, and that's not a good thing.
— James Blake

Exactly. People play tennis for the same reason they read a novel — for the emotional experience it supplies. Therefore, expect a few emotions. That just means you're alive.

Disproportionate anger and chagrin, however, make errors a weighty matter. To keep chagrin out of your head, just keep things in perspective. A match is just a game — fantasy warfare, a war you really want to win but one waged in sport, one there's no loss in losing. And missing tennis shots is no measure of your personal worth!

For excellent advice on how to get along with yourself and your errors, I highly recommend Tim Gallwey's book, The Inner Game of Tennis.

One more thing. When you step out onto the court, don't forget something as important as your shoes and racket — your sense of humor. It's armor proof to the arrows and bolts of the inner battle.

Which is nothing, because it's all in the head.

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