Mental game of Tennis: Part I

The French Open Grand Slam begins this week at Roland Garros, France and so I thought I would cover mental training in tennis for the next few weeks during the course of the tournament. I have worked with tennis players, especially children for the past 6 years and I really enjoy working with them.

Tennis is mostly an individual game, except when you play doubles, and hence mental conditioning can go a long way in getting an edge in performance. Research has shown that the performance of a player in a match is 90% mental and 10% physical. But not many tennis players spend enough time doing mental training.

Players get upset, show verbal negativity and sometimes even smash rackets when they lose a point. All such behaviour in some way contributes to them losing their mental edge and therefore even  losing the match.

Chris Evert (a former world No.1, who won 18 Grand Slams) has been known to visualize her games against her arch rival Martina Navratilova, prior to each time they played. This helped her tremendously during each of their clashes.

Below are prominent quotes from some of the top tennis players and each of these highlights a specific mental aspect of the player and how and why mental training is important.

“Losing is not my enemy...fear of losing is my enemy.”
- Rafael Nadal

“I'm not afraid of anyone, but sometimes I'm afraid of myself. The mental part is very important.”
- Justine Henin

“It is very important not to think about losing.”
- Venus Williams

“I never look back, I look forward.”
- Steffi Graf

“I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I love to play.” 

- Boris Becker

“The goal of getting better has to be the most important motivation because if it's simply to win a tournament and then you win it, what do you do then? For me, it's to see if I can see if I can play better now than I did yesterday.”

- Andre Agassi 

“Tennis is a psychological sport, you have to keep a clear head. That’s the reason I stopped playing”

- Boris Becker