The mental game: Part II

escaping stress—accepting reality—rituals—confidence

In Part I of The Mental Game, I wrote about the mental challenges that accompany the act of playing; the nerves and tightness that can accompany hitting the ball and playing points. Part II is about what happens to us between points. As I touched on last week:

This is the game that takes up 75% of a tennis match’s total time, and is the one most people think of when they think of “mental toughness”.

Last week I introduced Timothy Gallwey’s concept of the “Inner Game” that plays out within us:

“One, the “I,” seems to give instructions; the other, “myself,” seems to perform the action. Then “I” returns with an evaluation of the action.”

Gallwey labeled the thinking “I” Self 1, and the performing “myself” Self 2. The great roadblock in our ability to perform, Gallwey argued, is Self 1 not allowing the unconscious Self 2 to do what it is perfectly capable of doing. Instead, Self 1 worries about what others will think if we lose, scolds Self 2 for missing shots, and tries to steer a situation by trying too hard to perform a skill.”

We worry because there are social consequences depending on whether we win or lose. As Allen Fox summarises in his book, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match (emphasis added):

“Human beings evolved to live and work in groups. We are social species, like wolves or chimpanzee, and as such there is a social hierarchy. It is a pecking order or social ranking, and, like the other species, who is on top of who feels important. Simply, we are genetically programmed to compete with each other to elevate our rankings on this hierarchy. Other species achieve their rankings by fighting. We do it by competing successfully in various areas, one of which is sport. At its most basic level, a competitive tennis match is a symbolic fight for supremacy, a concept that clarifies many of the otherwise incomprehensible emotions swirling around such matches.”

While Gallwey’s “Inner Game” thesis was basically “winning doesn't matter and it is the process of self-mastery that is important”, Fox argued this thinking was more a reflection of the 1970s zeitgeist. Winning does matter.¹ We are genetically programmed to want to win contests, and no amount of wishful thinking to the contrary will change that. From Fox again (emphasis added):

“By its very nature, tennis is an emotional game…it is constructed to be a one-on-one, non-contact fistfight. It is inherently antagonistic since players use their tennis tools to break down their opponents. It is a battle of wills, where players compete for physical and mental dominance, where threat and intimidation play significant roles, and where one contestant ultimately proves himself/herself directly superior to an opponent.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p.14

If you have played sports that demand a high degree of fine motor control you will have undoubtedly noticed that emotions are counterproductive to performance, yet if you care about performing well it is nigh impossible to not have these emotions. This is the great challenge of tennis; how to play with the emotions inherent in a competitive game where winning matters.

“Most of the obviously counterproductive emotional responses during tennis matches are driven by subconscious fears of failure and urges to escape the stress of competition.”

—Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p.14

Escaping Stress

Beyond the stress accompanied in any competitive endeavour, tennis also has a uniquely stressful scoring system; not all points are equal. Losing a 30-shot rally is mentally harder than being aced. A point at 30-30 is more important than 15-15 is more important than 0-0. A game at 5-5 is more important than 2-2. So players must deal with these ever-increasing bouts of stress as they play towards the conclusion of points, games, sets, and matches, as well as the stress of not being able to “run out the clock.”

Fox notes that we are naturally motivated to escape from stressful situations that have uncertain results, like an evenly contested tennis match. The usual means of escape—which are nearly always counterproductive—are the following:

1. To become angry.

2. Make excuses.

3. Lose concentration.

4. Focus on “problems” rather than look for solutions.

5. Simply give up (sour grapes).

If I had to pick on one player who at times displays all of these escape mechanisms, Nick Kyrgios would come to mind. Everyone knows how good Kyrgios can play, and he has his own mental gifts in terms of self-confidence and an ability to rise to big occasions, but his coping mechanisms when losing are entirely based on escapism. They are “defense mechanisms” designed to create an alternate reality that is less stressful (“I’m losing because of <insert external reason here>). These are soothing delusions we apply to ourselves, because accepting that we are losing because we aren’t good enough is too painful of a reality.

It is important to recognise that doing these things are not always a conscious decision. They are natural responses to stress. As Fox points out, to play great tennis requires us to do something quite alien:

“It is unnatural to remain rational and unemotional in important matches when one is getting tired, things are going wrong, and the prospects of failure loom large.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p.16

We are constantly running uphill against our nature. But there are ways to reduce stress that won’t blow up your chances of winning. One involves accepting the reality of your situation, the other involves developing habits that channel attention.

Accepting reality

“Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind. Which means taking stock of where you are and thinking coolly.”

— Rafa: My Story

I have made the analogy between tennis and poker before, because both rely on some skill and some luck (although with different ratios of each to be sure—there is less luck in tennis):

Tennis is a difficult sport to dominate because a player has the upper hand each time they get to serve; to be number 1 in the world only requires that you average ~55% of points won. You’ll hear commentators talk about ‘percentage plays’ often as a way of communicating that fact. Like poker, the better player doesn’t win every point, but over time the percentages start to matter; a player with the weaker hand can get lucky on the river only so many times.

Poker players accept that the outcomes of a hand are largely out of their control; the flop, turn, and river can make or break the cards they are holding, and while a good player can play their hands well and increase their chances of winning over a series of hands, poker’s game has more chance built into it than tennis. Although more in charge of their destiny than their poker friends, tennis players struggle with uncertainty for two reasons:

1. They recognize that luck plays a smaller role in a tennis match compared to games of chance. Losing means the blame rests on the player.

2. They lack self-awareness.

The second point I think is understudied and one I have written about when looking at Andrey Rublev’s slam performances. Players still get upset even when performing right in line with their average performance. Watching Rublev get dismantled by Dan Evans last week in Montreal was another clear example of this. I have written about Rublev’s backhand ineffectiveness and his need to add variety to his game. I watched him train several times this week in Montreal, and most of his sessions—at least ones in view of the public—involved working on his bread-and-butter power groundstrokes. That’s fine, but you can’t get mad when you get exposed by someone who plays in a manner that doesn’t fall within your wheelhouse. Rublev was breaking the racquet over his leg after the first game of the match. He needed to accept that the match-up was difficult for him with his current limitations and that he was going to make errors. None of that was evident in a 6-4 6-4 loss where his tactics barely changed throughout the match and he looked tortured. From the outside, it seems like he doesn’t think he should be losing to a player like Evans, yet reality says otherwise (their H2H is now 3-3). Off court Rublev has spoken about changes he need to make in his game, yet it’s not evident it has transitioned into matches yet. If he accepted his limitations and weaknesses, understood that he was going to miss and struggle against this type of opponent, and focused on sticking to a strategy that tips the odds in his favour, he would be a far tougher prospect than he already is. This is what the best players do.

One of the mentally toughest players we have ever seen accepts losing points and even appreciates the skill of his opponent. Some excerpts from Nadal’s book, Rafa: My Story:

“Aces are like rain. You accept them and move on.”

“Another thing about watching my matches again closely, dispassionately, is that in appreciating and respecting the skill of my opponents, watching them hit wonderful winners, I learn to accept losing points against them with more serene resignation. Some players rage and despair when they are aced, or when they are the victims of a magnificent passing shot. That is the path to self-destruction. And it is crazy, because it means you believe yourself to be capable, in some kind of ideal tennis world, of subduing your opponent’s game from start to finish. If you give your opponent more credit, if you accept that he played a shot you could do nothing about, if you play the part of the spectator for a moment and generously acknowledge a magnificent piece of play, there you win balance and inner calm. You take the pressure off yourself. In your head, you applaud; visibly, you shrug; and you move on to the next point, aware not that the tennis gods are ranged against you or that you are having a miserable day, but that there is every possibility next time that it will be you who hits the unplayable winner.”

— Rafa: My Story

Habits and rituals

“Rituals calm the nerves. Rituals are sequences of activity that you always perform leading up to the start of the next point that are always the same. Notice the word, always, which is meant to emphasize the concept that these activity sequences do not change. They form an island of stability in a sea of competitive uncertainty because they are completely under the player’s control. (unlike the outcome of the next point) Filling your mind by focusing on a simple, controllable and repeatable ritual reduces fearful thinking (and choking) because when you are thinking about one thing you cannot think about another.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p.68

Recall from Part I the idea of having an external focus of attention:

By now it should be no surprise that an external focus of attention is superior to an internal one. It gets you out of your own way. “Watch the ball” is pretty simple advice, but it turns out it may be the best thing a coach could keep harping on about. It’s Lindy and keeps the focus off the Self.

Just as having an external focus during points helps you execute, rituals help to channel consciousness away from possible unhelpful thoughts and emotions between points. Nadal is famous for his routines, and people make fun of them, but I’m sure it helps him in those big moments when he has these familiar habits to cling to; the island of stability. The conscious mind cannot focus attention on everything. It is a spotlight. Just as your eyes focus on something and blur the periphery, your consciousness does the same thing. Rituals and routines help focus that spotlight on something mundane (like obsessively placing waterbottles, bouncing balls, wiping sweat, picking your wedgie, etc.,). It doesn’t matter what the ritual is, what matters is that you always do it so your attention is less likely to wander to unhelpful thoughts about bad line calls, the wind, the opponent.

Just as technique improves by removing unnecessary components, the mental game improves by removing unnecessary thoughts (emphasis added):

“The starting point for controlling emotion (and probably the most useful single idea in this book) is the following: When a point ends have no feeling or emotional reactions at all! It means that whether you have made the most egregious error or hit the most outlandish winner, it’s generally best to have no emotional reaction whatsoever.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p. 26

A note on confidence

If there was a secret way to increase confidence then everything else wouldn’t need to be said. But there isn’t. In the end, confidence is pegged to your recent performances:

“… there is no intellectual way to create confidence out of uncertainty…you must earn it. And this by winning. Only winning begets true confidence because confidence is a subconscious and emotional “expectation of success,” and we develop these expectations largely from past experience.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p. 75

But you don’t need confidence to win. It certainly helps, but champions are often defined by their ability to win despite playing poorly or lacking confidence, as Nadal said recently:

“The most important key in tennis that I think Federer, Djokovic and myself have is winning a lot of matches despite playing badly.”

No matter how good you may be, you are going to have bad days and losses. Your confidence is going to fluctuate. Even if you accept reality and stick to routines, you will still lose and play poorly at times (emphasis added).

“…positive emotions help but do not guarantee good play. This fact tends to confuse players, because they often find that they still lose even after disciplining their emotions positively and well. So they start to think emotional control has no value. And they are dead wrong! Even though good emotions do not guarantee a victory, bad emotions usually guarantee a loss. Emotions only set the stage for the quality of play that follows, but they don’t control it. Good emotions only make good play more likely; they guarantee nothing.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match, p. 24

None of what I have read or written about on this topic is all that new or surprising or disputed. It is simple advice that is hard to follow. A final quote from Fox (emphasis added):

“Emotional control requires motivation rather than information. Under the stress of a match, players need to be extraordinarily motivated to keep their normal urges to escape under control. These emotions are extremely compelling and will get out of hand in an instant if the players are not on top of them. And it is not a matter of simply giving players information they don’t have. Not only is the information simple and obvious, but they’ve heard it countless times before from coaches, parents, magazine article, books, and television commentators. They couldn’t avoid it if they tried. The problem is getting them to do something about it.”

— Allen Fox, Tennis: Winning the Mental Match

Unlike technique, a player can develop great mental toughness quickly and at any stage of their career; it is a choice largely reflective of their motivation to succeed. As with good technique, a good mental game doesn’t guarantee good play, it just raises the floor of your worst game. Looking at the great players, just as I have argued they converge on technical landmarks, they also tend to exhibit similar characteristics emotionally: they rarely show negative emotion, they employ routines, and they accept losses.

I finish with a video from the ATP on mental toughness. Some notable quotes:

• Andy Murray (0:19) - “I think with the scoring system in tennis, I think there are certain points that are more important than others, and certain games that are more important than others, and I think that’s where the best players tend to focus in more and make better decisions, less mistakes, and up their game and intensity in those moments.”

• Kei Nishikori (0:44) - “All the guys who are top 10, they really play good in important points…they won’t give you any easy mistakes.”

• John Isner (1:27) - “Well Novak (Djokovic) seems calm on court, I mean, he certainly has a lot of wins under his belt to be calm out there.”

1. Fox acknowledges that Gallwey’s thesis did contain some truths. The satisfaction of improving at skills/gaining competency in a domain, expressing ourselves creatively and artistically through a medium (like tennis), building things (like your game), etc., are all inherently pleasing to us despite the absence of a score or a win.