Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

To improve your game, you must begin to shift from reacting emotionally and use your brain more. The emotional realm is when you play points with doubt, a lack of confidence, fear, and even anger, and you are often overcome with insecurity and frustration. Sound familiar? Even at the top level, tennis players deal with many negative emotions that conspire to wreck their game. It's just that the top players can override the negative emotions better, or their more brilliant intellect takes over art practised in crucial times and saves the day by helping them complete the win. But at the lower level, players are overwhelmed by all their negative emotions, which subotage their game. It's not surprising then that tennis, and many other sporting pursuits, can be very frustrating for most and gut-wrenching for others. The continual emotional conflict between what you want to do and what you actually do in reality can result in us having a mental meltdown during the match. When our int

Gael Monfils, his tennis shirt stained with clay from numerous falls during this nearly 3-hour match, is bent over his racket, looking like he can't go on. Will he continue? Can he even run to another ball? You bet he can! During his long career, Gael Monfils has been involved in many matches like this. Gael Monfils employs the classic " wounded duck " strategy often and successfully. Imagine that you've worked your way back into a match after losing the first set and have continued to control the momentum by dominating the 2nd set.  At the start of the third set, everything feels under control. Your opponent is making uncharacteristic errors and physically and mentally looking like a beaten player. You have established momentum in the match but is everything as it seems? During a match, momentum can be with you, with your opponent, or in a neutral state whereby both players are trying to wrestle control of it. Players who adopt the wounded duck strategy are ultimatel

  You could be mistaken for thinking tennis is all about aggression. At the top level, players are pounding the ball at every opportunity. You'd be surprised then if you learned that my goal when coaching advanced players is to first have them develop a defensive mental foundation.   I'm not suggesting that I teach players to send up continuous lobs during the rally or for them to stand at the back fence to retrieve balls. My goal with advanced players is to change the internal mental dialogue all players experince before every stroke.  A PLAYERS INTERNAL DIALOG BEFORE SHOTS Every player has a continuous mental dialogue inside their head when they play a point.  "How aggressive should I be on this ball?", "Is this the ball to change direction down the line?" etc. The internal dialogue inside our heads drives our decision making There's nothing wrong with this type of internal dialogue, but there are better questions to ask yourself before each shot. So,

What would you do next? You've rallied strongly and managed to put your opponent under pressure. They've dropped the ball short in the court; it's time to finish the point with an aggressive winner. Can you finish points like this confidently? Do you finish with a winner, or do you get the jitters and embarrass yourself in front of everyone? If it's the latter, you're in the majority.  The inability to finish points is a problem for tennis players worldwide. How well do you react when finishing the point? I've coached players of all levels, every level of player suffers from nerves; it's just that the best players somehow have ways to overcome them.  THE MIND SCALE: 0 - 100 I need you to use your imagination for me.  Try to remember what goes on inside your head when you want to attack that half-court ball and hit a winner. Imagine that your thoughts are like a straight line.  Picture a mental scale in your mind from 0-100. 0 is when you decide to attack th

It's not uncommon for players to play extremely well throughout a match but for various reasons fail to win the important points.  The important points in a match are the break points, game points, and set points. If, for whatever reason you are not converting these opportunities it's very tough to win matches. Players often change their mindset for the important points and suddenly do things out of character. While they might have been playing calm, intelligent tennis for most of a set, when they get to the "business end" of the set they suddenly decide to play risky shots that they weren't attempting before.  To see a player suddenly change to risky low percentage shots at the most important times in the match is a coach's worst nightmare Establish Patterns Early: Start analyzing your opponent during the warm-up, and continue observing her throughout the match, just in case adjustments to your strategy are needed. Look for obvious strengths and weaknesses ba