Journal 12, Week 4

Coaching the mental aspect of tennis

It is easy for me to coach young players in the fundamentals of tennis. I understand them clearly and have a pretty good method of relating an athletes ability to create a proper technique. Fundamentals are a crucial aspect of the game and being a successful tennis player will be challenging if the fundamentals are not properly implemented into a player's game.

However, I deal with teenagers on a daily basis that are at a difficult time in their lives to overcome mental dilemmas. Some players have stronger grasps on fundamentals and rely on their natural ability to make shots turn into points wheras others lacking the fundamental strength end up lacking the ability to execute the strategy. From what I have gathered over the past 2 1/2 years of coaching tennis, a players mind works through (in this order):

1) Physical aspects of the sport
2) Mental aspects of the sport
3) Emotional aspects of the sport

The players with fundamentals are generally able to start to think through mental aspects. In a nutshell, they know how to serve and hit balls. They are able to progress into the mental aspects of the game.

The mental aspects are where strategy comes in. Knowing how to hit the ball and being able to decide where and when to hit it to spots on the court is tougher to teach. Situations in tennis happen within fractions of a second and a player needs to develop a feel for the game at this level. Of my team of 18 girls this season, I have two that are able to do this. It is not surprising to me that these are my two top players.

The emotional aspect is often confused with the mental aspect as it is often referred to as mental toughness. I seperate emotional from mental by thinking about how quickly a player can process a good or bad point and make necessary adjustments to their game. The ability to understand how the match is progressing and further analyzing why it is happening is a complicated thing.

For example, I coached a player in a match during last spring that had tremendous success in the first set at playing shots over and over to his opponents backhand side. His opponent made mistake after mistake hitting backhand balls out and into the net and my player. My player was playing a strong mental game. However, the second set was totally different. My player continued to play to the backhand in all rallies. By this point, his opponent had fixed his fundamental mistakes and missed many fewer shots. My player began to make mistakes at this point as he was trying for difficult shots with the same goal of getting the ball to his opponents backhand. He failed to realize that his opponent clearly knew where every shot was going and he was able to cheat to that side and set himself up for easier strokes. When he did this, my player was not mentally strong enough to change his strategy and try to use the entire court. He ended up losing a close match due to the lack of mental toughness.

I am challenged by a few problems in teaching the mental side. First, I have many players in my program and I feel my duty as coach is to work with them all as evenly as possible. Also, I can't be on the courts due to the rules of the game to point things out after every point. My players need to gain the mental and emotional skills on their own for the most point with my guidance to the best of my ability. This is generally going to be easier for a player that is willing to study and learn the game outside of playing a lot of competitive situations. However, finding teenagers that are willing to make that sacrifice is very rare to find.