Crumbling Confidence on the Tennis Court — SS #53

“My son, Neville, has the strokes and footwork to compete, yet his confidence crumbles in two situations: when he loses a tight first‑set tiebreaker and when he plays someone who’s beaten him before. In those moments, he feels he has “something to prove,” and his game unravels.

We’re already doing a few things on our own. Neville keeps a notebook at every match with simple goals (“double‑step,” “aim for big targets,” “have fun”), we also gave him a breathing script to calm him when frustration rises, and a reflection page where he writes what went well, what didn’t, and how each made him feel. We remind him to read it on change‑overs, and we always emphasize that wins and losses aren’t everything. Still, he gets stuck on proving himself, and the results aren’t great.”

I received the above message from a tennis parent. Do you find yourself in similar situations where your confidence crumbles unexpectedly? Or do you know a player who has challenges with the same? Today’s issue will be a little shorter, but I’ll try to hit the main points. I’ll write my response as if I’m responding straight to the parent.

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Hello!

Thank you for getting in touch with me. I’m sorry to hear about Neville’s struggles but can see that you have already put in some thought into helping him out. Well done on that front as many parents and coaches are not even willing to accept that mental skills can be trained toward flourishing. Worse, some coaches somehow think that it’s all technique and tactics, which, if you even know any of the science around mental performance, you’ll know is an absurd way to think. But that’s a story for another day.

With that being said, I’ll point out two main areas for improvement for your child. I know you have mentioned his confidence crumbling in two specific situations, but let me first address how you’ve tried to help him on this front and potential issues with it.

Problem area 1: lack of specificity in process goals and general vagueness

Goals like “double‑step” are okay but there are a few problems. We know from the literature that this kind of goal can lead us to over‑monitoring our body positions and lead to a breakdown in automaticity. Basically, when we set process goals we don’t want to have them to be focused on our body’s positions.

We want them to be, in general, distal—or away from our body. It’s fine if he’s working on split stepping during practice and improving the quality of that execution, but in matches, that can cause problems.

We also don’t want to have super-technical goals for matches… because, again, we want to perform in a state of automaticity and this occurs by reducing the cognitive load we’re under and taking the stress off our working memories. Put another way, think about it like this, it’s 3-3 and 30-30… do you really think a tennis player should focus on how their coach told them to keep their elbow off their body when preparing for their forehand? No. That’s a recipe for disaster and disjointed execution.

Keep process goals, simple, external. Better yet, make them patterns of play and practice those patterns of play until execution becomes automatic.

Additionally, a goal like “have fun” is great.

But what does that mean? Has he thought about what behaviors he should exhibit? Has he written those out? I think that’s way too vague.

I prefer to give players the “best‑friend” method (this is basically a version of the double-standard technique from cognitive therapy) where I encourage them to treat themselves as their own best friend on the tennis court. Really take him through scenarios in matches and have him verbalize how he’s talking to himself or what he’s saying. Are these things he would say to his best friend? A younger sibling or a teammate? His mother or father? If not, that might be able to give him pause.

Perhaps that might make him realize that he needs to work on his self-talk.

Problem area 2: anxiety and arousal hijack his responses

It’s great that you’ve given him a breathing script for tight and tense moments, but if the expectation is that he somehow remembers to stick to it when it really matters—when things get truly tight, tense, and anxious—then that expectation is flawed; especially if he doesn’t practice this outside of his tennis.

The problem is that stress and anxiety can narrow our attentional focus, and it’s almost like you have blinders on. It’s like your thoughts and emotions are a bullet train speeding by and you’ve somehow stuck a grappling hook into that train and are flying away at 200 mph.

If you’ve ever experienced road rage or a moment of anger or frustration where you found yourself hijacked by your thoughts and emotions and later regretted it, perhaps you can relate.

It can be a similar occurrence when a player experiences anxiety, frustration, or anger. So just giving them a breathing script can be useful, but it’s no point if they can’t get off autopilot or unhook themselves from their thoughts and emotions.

So what to do? Well, we have to practice.

In the mindfulness canon (or the westernized version of it in general), this is called getting off autopilot. Various authors like Kaufman et al., founders of MSPE, and Segal et al., founders of MBCT, refer to it as this. For your son, this means consistent practice of versions of mindfulness.

Practices can run around the five senses, the breath, and body scans. The 5-4-3-2-1 is one of my favorites. But, here’s the thing, he would have to practice it multiple times a day if he truly is going to be able to call upon it when it matters most. Check out the below explainer on 5-4-3-2-1s.

This increased awareness should make it easier for your son to start to notice when he’s being taken over by his emotional reactions, anxiety, and arousal levels and allow him to calm himself down and refocus on his process goals.

Takeaways

If I were to summarize into three bullet points how I think your son could benefit from sport psychology, it would be this:

• Set external, distal process goals

• Be more specific around the behaviors his goals entail

• Actually practice the mental skills that would help him (getting off autopilot)

I know I didn’t touch upon his lack of execution against players who have beaten him before, and how he feels he has “something to prove.” This could be a problem with his motivations or ego-orientation, which I just wrote about last week, but the next few weeks are crazy busy for me!

If you look through my previous writing, though, you’ll be able to find the information you need.

Thank you!

Malhar

P.S.: I’m working with a tiny snippet of information here. A sport psychologist or sport psychology practitioner will usually have a 20 to 40-minute intake process with a new client so that they can truly understand all the factors that might be impacting their performance. With that in mind, take what I say here as just general advice and not personalized sports and performance psychology consulting.

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.