The Mental Game
Tennis isn’t all about hitting your groundstrokes and returning the shots. The tennis game requires two critical elements, one is the physical aspect in which you have to be in good shape and be able to hit the strokes and the other is about the mental aspect.
I personally have played tournaments and many competitive matches and I’ve come to learn the hard way how the mental game is very important. Here’s a scenario; I was playing in a tournament at Midland Community Tennis Center. I was up 5-4 in sets and I was serving for the match. All of a sudden I started playing tentatively while hitting my shots. The reason is I was thinking way too much about the score rather than just hitting my shots. I ended up losing the game 5-7. No one likes to lose, but from losing we can learn a lot about the game in general and our mental game as well.
There’s a book that I would really recommend for you if you want to improve your mental game. It’s called ” The Inner Game Of Tennis” and it has taught me alot.
In tennis there’s something called letting it happen and not making it happen. Tennis is much like life, when you let it happen things tend to go well. If you try too hard to make it happen you will end up missing a lot of the shots. Your body knows the routine of hitting the ball and moving along with it. It’s a matter of just letting it happen and playing your game rather than forcing the issue.