Many of you are watching the golf Masters tournament in Augusta, Ga. One of the things that strike me about golf is the tremendous mental pressure on the professional golfers as they calculate the next shot, gauge their competitors, and deal with the logistics of spectators, sponsors, etc. Through it all they must keep mental focus on their shots and strategy, while forcing out the doubts and stress that can break down their game.
Tennis is also very much about “mastering” the mental pressures in a match. Shots that flow in practice, or “fun” matches with friends, break down under the pressure of a “real” match.
One way to help you learn to deal with match pressure in tennis is to mentally make every point in practice important. Here are a couple of ideas to help you work on your mental focus in practice.
- Play a set or a whole match with a friend, starting each game at 30-30 and use no ad scoring. This helps you treat every point as a big point.
- If you have trouble closing out games, try a game called Back to Love…Whenever you have a game point that you don’t convert, your score goes back to love. So if you’re ahead 40-30 and lose the next point, the score becomes 0-40.
Using these techniques and purposefully using practice matches to strengthen your mental game, can make you a tennis master.