Craig Kardon: What is Confidence?

Confidence means learning to believe your game will be successful.

Confidence in tennis, as in anything else, is the ability to have faith in yourself. It’s your belief in yourself and the belief your game will be successful no matter what the circumstance.

When you go into a match being confident, it doesn’t really matter how the pendulum swings during the match. Let’s say you get into a rally and you hit your best shot, but your opponent gets it back and hurts you with his reply. When you’re confident, that doesn’t seem to bother you. You know in the long run that that’s only a brief intermission in the way things are going to happen.

Confidence means you believe in your shots, no matter what goes on the other side of the net. A lot of players will go for the shot, but at the last minute, there’s not that belief. To make it work you have to let go of the outcome and just trust the stroke and believe that it’s going to work. In the long-term, you believe you will win for the simple reason that you believe in yourself.

Shot Confidence

It’s important to understand that…