Tennis Lessons
- The mental game of tennis is 80% of your match performance. This applies to many other parts of your life. “Losing is not the enemy. Fear of losing is the enemy.” Fear is the main killer of performance. (My favorite treatment of fear is actually a book by the rapper 50 Cent). But there’s nothing so stark as experiencing how fear changes how you behave in a tennis match.
- Pit your strengths against your opponents weaknesses. This is fundamental to any successful strategy. The better players have countermoves and more weapons, less glaring weaknesses. Whoever runs out of countermoves usually loses the match.
- If an opponent is significantly better than you, increase your aggression and risk tolerance. Go for every shot, especially the serves. There are ways to win a match against better opponents. The worst strategy is to play low variance defensive tennis. For me, I go big on serve, net aggression, and net play because I am not as good as my opponents.
- There’s a satisfaction in doing your best. If I lose a match but kept strong mentally and in my aggressive style, I’m happy with my performance. I did everything I could, but somebody else came out ahead. That’s OK.
- An upcoming match motivates you because stress, nervousness and fear motivate you more than.