Continue Reading
This is a preview of the article. The full content is available to TennisPlayer.net members only.
Even for great players, winning a tough match is a prolonged mental struggle.
Anyone who has played tennis for any length of time knows that winning a tough match involves a prolonged and often agonizing mental struggle. The match may last for hours, and to win you must concentrate with intensity from start to finish. That’s hard work. And on top of it, you are becoming increasingly hot, tired and physically uncomfortable. Maintaining your resolve under those conditions is no easy task. But to win, you must; because when your resolve dissipates, you are finished. Until then, you always have a chance.
Your opponent across the net, meanwhile, is experiencing the same problems – difficult as that may be for you to perceive in the heat of battle. I always found it hard to picture – when my own body ached with fatigue and the cool drink and shower were looking better than the winner’s trophy – that my opponent might be getting ready to fold. Even though I knew intellectually that he must be as tired as I was, my own pain had a certain reality that his could never quite match.
How do you nudge your opponent toward…