The Dangers of Strong Emotion

Are strong emotions useful in winning tennis matches?

What do strong emotions do to your tennis game? Many people think that it’s useful to get hyped-up and emotional in order to play their best tennis. It seems to help Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova, and it didn’t stop John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors from collecting a boat-load of major championships. (Although it didn’t do McEnroe much good in the French Open final when he led Ivan Lendl two sets to none, went ballistic over some small issue, and blew the match.) But most people will find that experiencing strong emotion during match play is disruptive. Why?

First, let’s consider at a little deeper level how trained tennis players hit their beautifully coordinated shots. Tennis is largely a game of habit and reflex. And practice is mostly a matter of motor learning. Through countless hours of repetition players program in patterns of nerve responses that drive the muscles to hit the various strokes and react properly to the multitude of different on-court situations.

When they get into competitive match there is no time to think during points. They simply want their complex and carefully programmed responses to come out properly without…