Play With Statistics—Not Emotions — SS #15

Are you in touch with reality?

Do you know what’s actually going on in your tennis match?

No, I’m not trying to gaslight you. I’m trying to make you realize that your emotions could be messing with your interpretation of what’s happening on the tennis court.

In Vic Braden's Mental Tennis, Braden recounts an occasion when Stefan Edberg, the six-time Grand Slam champion, was having some issues with his second serve. Edberg thought that it was a liability.

So he hired a tennis analytics firm to find out how he could improve his second serve. Bill Jacobson of CompuTennis put together his findings and presented them to Edberg: that he was winning about 80% of his second serve points. Which, if true, is a phenomenally high percentage!

Vic Braden’s Mental Tennis. If you want to support me at no cost to you, please use this Amazon affiliate link to purchase this fantastic book! (Or anything else for that matter.)

Yet Edberg was thinking that his second serve was a weakness that he needed to address. According to Braden, receiving the information from Jacobson gave Edberg even more confidence in his first serve and allowed him to go after it with more vigor.

Why am I starting with this old story from a bygone era? Because it highlights an essential aspect of tennis—and sport in general—that many players overlook: and that’s the power of objective data versus subjective feelings.

Often, our emotions and perceptions can cloud our judgment, leading us to make decisions that are detached from reality.

On the club and recreational level, one of the most common things that I see is the “fear of the backhand.” A few times players have come to me and said that their backhands are their Achilles heels. And that only—if only—they could get their backhand together, a staircase would fall out of the sky and they could stroll up those stairs to a higher level of recreational play.

But the results were surprising when we “statted” their match (basically take statistics of what’s going on through a match-stat sheet). While their backhand might have had some technical flaws and defects, they had learned to treat it as ol’ reliable and just get it deep into the court.

And where were most of their unforced errors coming from?

Their forehands!

Their ‘stronger’ stroke was letting them down!

Confronting this data often had them—and myself—really taking pause to consider what’s what on the tennis court.

It definitely helped me to become more aware of using emotional reasoning in my game, too, and also to be more data-driven in addressing tennis tactics and development.

The Cognitive Distortion: Emotional Reasoning

We’re diving into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Made Simple again and connecting this all to a cognitive distortion called Emotional Reasoning.

This book has been great for me—in life and in tennis! If you’d like to buy it, consider using this link to help me support this writing at no cost to you.

Emotional reasoning is where you believe something to be true because it feels true, even if there is evidence to the contrary. How might we as tennis players be falling into this harmful pattern of thinking?

In Edberg's case, his feelings of insecurity about his second serve led him to believe it was a significant weakness, despite the data showing otherwise. In the case of club and recreational players, there’s often a hyper-fixation on one aspect of their game… when in reality something else is causing all the problems.

This kind of thinking can be detrimental to your performance on the court. If you're constantly basing your strategies and self-assessments on how you feel rather than what the statistics show, you’re likely to make misguided decisions.

How to Combat Emotional Reasoning

So with all of this in mind, let’s dive into ways we can hold emotional reasoning at bay.

Track Your Performance (Record Your Matches):

Keep detailed records of your matches, including serve percentages, unforced errors, and winners. Over time, you'll build a database of objective information about your game. This data can provide valuable insights that might contradict your feelings.

Easier said than done, right? But there are two ways to achieve this. The first one is with SwingVision (no this is not a sponsored post). The other way to do it is to record your matches and then learn to “stat” them. This is where you take statistics on your performance after completion. Which leads to…

Review Your Matches:

After your matches, review the stats and compare them to how you felt during the performance. Did you feel like your serve was off, but the numbers show a high first-serve percentage? Did you think you were making too many unforced errors, but the stats reveal otherwise? This kind of analysis can help you separate feelings from facts.

Consult With Your Coach:

Share your performance data with your coach and discuss any discrepancies between your feelings and the statistics. Any good teaching pro can help you interpret the data and provide a more objective view on your performance and matchplay.

Set Data-Driven Goals:

Instead of basing your goals on how you want to feel, base them on specific statistical improvements. For example, aim to increase your first-serve percentage by 10% over the next month or reduce your unforced errors by a certain number. These measurable goals are more actionable and can lead to concrete improvements in your match performance!

Play With Statistics—Not Emotions

Your emotions don't give you the full story. By relying on objective data, you can make more informed decisions about your game and avoid the pitfalls of emotional reasoning.

Remember, even great players like Stefan Edberg had moments of doubt. What set them apart was their willingness to seek out the truth and use it to their advantage.

Next time you're on the court and feel like something isn't working, take a step back and look at the stats. You might find that your game is in better shape than you think.

Thanks for reading. If you found this issue helpful, please share it with your tennis friends and encourage them to subscribe! Conceptualizing and writing this takes hours—sharing it with someone would make my day.

P.S. Let me know how this approach works for you. Did you find any surprises in your stats compared to how you felt on the court? Please share your experiences with me by commenting on this post. Use the little speech bubble in top left of this email.

P.P.S.: I first heard this term, “Play with stats, not emotions” from Steve Smith of GreatBase Tennis! I will always try to source my information and give appropriate credit.

Thanks to so many of you for commenting on the first version of the below video. Here is the answer: