Confront — SS #46

Here are the results of my poll from a few weeks ago. Most of you who responded said you struggle with anxiety and choking. I’ll be mindful to address these topics in the coming months.

I had an amazing freshman year.

I went something like 10-5 at the number 1 and 2 lines in my college tennis team.

I finished the year ranked top 20 in the NJCAA national rankings (junior college).

I lost to the no.1 ranked player in the NAIA in a super tie-break. 

The team's coach at the time, though tactically helpful, was a technical dunce.

He had been a former top 10 junior in the US and often regaled us with stories of wins over Roddick and Hewitt during his junior days.

But as is the case with many top players—they are terrible technical coaches (not all, but many). They can strike or serve and compete well but often can't conceptualize or teach what exactly is going on. 

"The top players don't do what they say and don't say what they do." — I believe that's a Vic Braden quote.

The coach convinced me that I should change my heavy topspin game, built around movement, fitness, and high and heavy groundstrokes, into one built around power and hitting the ball harder and flatter.

I stayed a little longer after the end of the semester and rebuilt my forehand and game. Hitting flatter. Closer to the net.

Then I went to Melbourne, where my family lived at the time, and didn't touch a racket for a couple months.

My second year was a disaster.

I went from playing line 1 and line 2 on the team to being benched by the coach for half the season because I wasn’t getting him the results he wanted.

My confidence was gone.

Hitting harder and flatter and closer to the net without any spin just meant so many errors.

When I was put back to play, it was at line 6 (where the weakest players on the team usually play).

And I started losing to random players I thought I should have beaten (shoulding).

Players I would have beaten easily in the past.

It was demoralizing.

I felt like my whole world, tennis, at that time, was collapsing around me.

I was stressed.

If I wasn't a "good" tennis player, then who was I?

Towards the second half of the season, I had kind of given up expectations.

Disassociated.

I would go into matches, with no confidence in my groundstrokes or even ability to get three balls into the court.

I kind of stopped caring.

The continual losses were a shock.

And to cope with them I detached myself from caring.

Why am I telling you this sob story?

Because I want to talk to you about coping strategies in psychology and how they apply to our efforts on the court.

I had poor coping skills at that time and it lead me towards avoidant coping. A style where an individual basically ignore and disassociates from the stressors in their life.

How Do You Cope?

In psychology, there are generally two or three ways individuals can cope with the stressors in their lives (definitionally, it depends on whom you speak to). But for our purposes, we’ll lay them out as three below and give you specific examples.

Problem-Focused Coping

This is the most effective coping mechanism. It’s where we realistically assess what’s disturbing us in our sporting lives and take actions to fix or rectify the situations that are leading to consistent stress.

For example, in my case, I might have organized meeting with my coach and said that I want to go back to what was working for me and playing with a heavy topspin game. Or I might have sought out the aid of other coaches in the area who were willing to work with me on my game to get me out my technically induced slump. Perhaps a sports psychology practitioner or a sports psychologist. But, I was barely 19 at the time. Which is why it’s so important to have the appropriate infrastructure around developing athletes—but that’s a story for another day.

Here’s another example: let’s say you’re having the yips on your second serve. Instead of ignoring it and hoping that it goes away, you take the time to systematically rebuild your serve, gradually trying it out in challenging and realistic scenarios, until finally you bring it to the match court and it becomes a stroke you can rely on.

Maybe you consistently struggle with managing your anger and frustration the court. A few obliterated rackets later, you finally say, yeah, I need to get help. You work with a sports psychology practitioner for a few sessions, uncover the reasons for anger, and use evidence-based strategies to reduce your outbursts.

Perhaps you finally decide to tackle your anxiety before a during matches.

Emotion-Focused Coping

Instead of changing the situation, you respond with how you react to the situation. This can be helpful when you need an immediate salve, or the stressors are out of your control. Think of a roving referee overruling your legitimate “out” call on a clay court by coming onto the court and pointing to a completely random, different mark on the court. (Can you tell that this has happened to me before?)

Instead of getting flustered, frustrated, blowing up, and yelling at the referee, emotion-focused coping might have you apply techniques from psychology and sports psychology to change your reactions to the scenario.

Or maybe if you consistently get tight in deciding sets, you might use self-talk, cognitive behavioral, or mindful-acceptance strategies to regulate your responses.

Avoidant-Coping

This is unhealthy for your tennis. It might give you the impression of temporary relief, but is ineffective in the long term. This is when a player disengages from the problem instead of engaging it and tackling it head-on.

For example, if you know you have a shitty backhand, and the thought of hitting backhands in matches stresses you out, instead of addressing that weakness and engaging in steps to eradicate that weakness in your game, you decide to ignore that side completely.

Cross-court backhands? Hell no.

Asking someone to attack that side consistently in baseline games so that you can learn to neutralize off it? No thanks.

Assessing whether you have technical inefficiencies that you can address to improve that side? You’ll pass.

Or let’s say you go into matches constantly stressed and anxious about your performances. The thoughts in your mind are a running narration of criticism and self-destruction. Performance anxiety and feeling like you’re not performing how you should be are common occurrences in your life. Heck, maybe you’ve even considered sports psychology services.

Maybe you even read a newsletter on sports psychology for tennis (wink wink).

Instead of admitting that you have an issue, and seeking out the help you need to rectify that issue, you keep doing the same things that you’ve been doing. Hoping, that somehow, things will change and that you’ll start a match without anxiety and finally start performing to your potential.

Rarely, extremely rarely, does it ever work that way.

What You Should Take Away from This

• Recognize how you cope: Are you tackling the issues in your tennis life head? Or are you avoiding them and hoping that they’ll disappear without action?

• Understand emotional regulation: While it can be useful to change our assessment and reactions to a situation, addressing your problems head-on can be more impactful.

• Shift towards problem-focused coping: It can be scary to admit that you have a part of your game that you need help with. Or that there are things which you cannot handle by yourself and need help with. But facing your problems head-on is the first step towards dismantling them.

I’ve made the mistake of avoidant coping many times in my tennis life.

Perhaps you have, too.

But I hope that this writing empowers you to tackle your problems head-on.

Disclaimer: I am not an Association of Applied Sports Psychology CMPC, certified sports psychology practitioner, nor am I a licensed mental health counselor, PsyD, or clinical PhD. I am pursuing a master’s in sports, exercise, and performance psychology, and I am a sports psychology practitioner-in-training. I have over 20 years of experience in tennis, including playing, coaching collegiately and with professional players, along with club management experience as a director of programs. I am certified by the Professional Tennis Registry and am a member of Tennis Australia. My aim is to bring the best information to tennis players around the world so that you can apply it for long-term improvement—but sometimes I will make mistakes. If this is your area of research or expertise, and you feel I’ve misunderstood something, please get in touch with me and if required I will happily issue a correction.