By Mark Rearden, West Lake Country Club | June 1, 2020
As I was at my desk working one morning, one of our patrons stopped by to chat with Michael (the youth pro at Palmetto Tennis Center). After concluding their conversation and on the way out the door, she asked if I would consider writing an article about how to cope with nerves while playing important matches. She mentioned this would be an appropriate time since last week marked the beginning of the USTA league season. Made sense to me so here goes.
Being nervous happens for any number of reasons. You may be fearful of failure (losing), not knowing what may happen (the unknown), you may be afraid of looking foolish, or maybe competition makes you uncomfortable. A match may hold some special meaning, like playing against someone you really want to defeat or this is the deciding match of the season. Regardless of the reason, it all feels the same inside so it may or may not be critical to identify why you feel nervous.
In all but the highest levels of play, the way it shows up the most is in our feet. That’s right. It’s in our feet. We stop moving. The stress we create for ourselves will almost always show up first as a lack of movement. We become like a deer in the headlights.
Hey Mark, you are merely stating one of the symptoms of the problem, but offering no real solution. Okay, but I have a question for you. When you get a cold (as in, no cure for the common), do you just go with it until it passes or do you treat the symptoms? Do you see where we are going? By treating the symptom, at least we are fixing the thing that is most affected by the nervousness.
One of the first things you should do is to put your feet in overdrive. That’s right, start wasting a little energy by bouncing or moving back and forth. And keep reminding yourself to do it on every point. Even if you are still nervous you will be in better position to hit the ball than you were before. I think you will find that by having your mind focused on something else, the nerves abate sooner rather than later. As a side note, don’t just chalk this up to “think about something else.” That is not the moral of this story.
Another thing that shows up when we are nervous or fearful is that we begin to over-manage our swing. Because we are not as confident, we try to make sure we don’t make a mistake. And every one of you reading this knows where that goes next. We then begin to make more mistakes than we normally do. Instead, we should swing away. Let ‘er go. That does not mean to pound the ball, it just means to swing uninhibited. Swing like you believe, even if you don’t. Better to miss having a go at it than swinging tight and restricted.
There are a couple of different ways one can prepare for a stressful match that you may find helpful. You will think me simplistic once you read my suggestion, but you need to make sure you warm up. Actually, I am advocating warming up beyond being ready to play physically. I am encouraging you to get your body ready to go and then play about 15 – 20 minutes of points to get your competitive juices engaged before the match starts. And role play a bit. Envision your opponent is on the other side, not the person you are warming up with. You must be happy that I have now offered some proactive advice rather than what to do once the monster has already gotten between your ears.
This next idea showed up in an article months ago. The idea is to put yourself in situations that cause you some level of discomfort. It might be returning a phone call that you dread, going out to eat with someone that you could easily make an excuse to and bail out. If you often ask someone at work to handle a situation that you are fearful of or if you sometimes avoid something new simply because you are not in complete control of all the variables, then break free and do it anyway. By trying to get comfortable in these real life situations, you are much more likely to be more at ease when it comes to a little competition on the tennis court. I have quoted my wife many times and this is another perfect moment to do it. She says everything we do today is just a dress rehearsal for what is coming tomorrow, so don’t worry about what is in front of you, just practice. Opening night is not until tomorrow.