I was playing a really good player yesterday from the club. He seemed (like many people seem to do) to move me from side to side.

He did this even hitting shots which are relatively lower percentage (but quite safe).

His basic strategy seemed to hit to the forehand. Open up the backhand. Then hit a shot to the backhand.

I chased down a lot of balls but lost the first set 6-3. It wasn’t all bad news. I played some really tight games and one a few of them.

In the second set, he quickly got up 4-2 but then I came charging back. I started to hit more down the line backhands some of them for clean winners. But in the end I lost 6-4.

In re-reading your strategy ebook, I realized that he was employing a basic strategy, move your opponent. He was hitting relatively lower percentage shots to achieve it but he was doing it safely.

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This year’s Wimbledon final loss of Roger Federer to Rafael Nadal was, in Roger’s words, the most painful loss he’s had in his career so far.

C. Brunskill / Getty Images

And it shows in two ways:

• Roger has lost confidence and belief in his sometimes almost supernatural abilities, and thus doesn’t use them, and so fails to blow his opponents off the court; and
• His opponents see that he is not as dominant as he used to be, and that they even have a chance of beating him.

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I have  12.5 years old son who plays tennis. His coaches and other people claim that he is very talented and has a very very good and natural technique.

However when he is playing he is more attempting to make “nice” points then just to put the ball in the court, he is very daring and very creative in his game.

This results in less success in games than he is expected (ratio of unforced errors is not to his favor… he is usually losing to himself), this results in loss in his self confidence.

How would you recommend to deal with that?

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