Operation Doubles Tennis: TM: Q and A

Do you always believe yourself? That little voice in your head - do you always believe it? Is it always telling you the truth?

Is believing yourself believing in yourself?

All right, I'll cut it out now ;-)

This Q & A with Tomaz Mencinger may be one of the most important things you'll ever learn

---

By Tomaz Mencinger
TennisMindGame.com

I am a 15 year old girl, and always before a tournament I either practice my serve or play a set against someone at my club. Almost always I play at my top performance. But at the tournament, if I start off poorly, my mental game goes downhill from the start. I understand that I'm supposed to move on and go to the next point, but I try and more times than not I'm not able to move on, and I continue to hit the ball in the net or out. For example at today's match I kept trying to encourage myself and focus on the next point, but every time I missed another shot I would get more frustrated and rush points and loose games more quickly. Also if I am playing against someone that I know I'm better than and can beat I get even more frustrated with myself when I make stupid errors. I understand mentally what I'm supposed to do, but I have not been able to actually do it.

I understand what you are saying.

What happens is that when things go wrong at the start you BELIEVE them and then they define your future performance.

You look for proof of how good you are and then you play accordingly.

I suggest you go through your past experiences and think whether your performance in a match has ever gone up and down? Or did it ALWAYS stay the same through a whole match?

If your answer is that your performance has gone up and down during a match, then you KNOW that even when your performance at the start is low, it can go up.

In fact, if you don't become negative about it and just keep playing it will almost ALWAYS go up. That's because you'll get used to the conditions, you'll warm up your body and mind to the competitive level, you'll start reading your opponent better and so on.

Try to remember a match (or several matches) when this happened. This will give you proof to counter your own doubts the next time you start a match not playing well.

And about playing weaker opponents and frustration: one thing to keep in mind is that at your age you still cannot blast someone off the court, even if they play poorly.

You'll have to construct points, and it will take some time to win a point. And it will take some time to win a match. You have to stay in the NOW and play each point. DON'T go into the future where you have already won, since this will make you lose focus on the current situation and play poorly.

Copyright 2008, Tomaz Mencinger -- all rights reserved worldwide

Tomaz Mencinger is the author of The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and The Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and How to Play Tennis: A Step-by-Step Video Instruction Guide for Tennis Beginners.

Archive of Past Articles

Technorati Tags: