Dealing With Bad Patches Of Play
Hi Tomaz,
Got your Mental Manual yesterday, I’m reading through it and it looks great! I thought I’d take the opportunity to ask you a question.
First, a little background: I’m coaching a 10 year old boy who needs help in the mental side of tennis.
When playing a match, he’ll be all smiles when winning but if he starts losing he intentionally starts “bashing” the ball and becomes extremely erratic.
His technique breaks down and everything goes downhill quickly.The boy has good technique on his shots and serve, but is naturally a bit erratic. When he plays a solid junior, the above negative situation arises.
I coach the boy for 1 hour once a week, and he shares the lesson with his sister.
My question is: What is your advice on how I go about incorporating some of the info from the manual into the context of the weekly lesson?
The Mental Manual is a collection of short tips and there’s one too for the “bad day” which can also be used for “bad periods” of time.
So you might show the kid some of the thoughts that are there.
I’d approach his problem from 2 sides:
1. SHOW him, that top players (especially his favorite, whoever that is) CANNOT play all the time well.
You need to show him the proof on TV. Show him how Federer (or Nadal) misses some shots – maybe easy ones. Make the effort to find these mistakes and record them. It’s going to be well worth it.
The kid is unrealistic at this age (some people are forever) and he believes that it his fault when he misses. Especially if he has been always corrected when he missed a shot.
This creates a belief that if he does everything right, he won’t miss. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a negative belief that causes so much damage among tennis players.
Unforced errors happen because the game is too difficult and because the human mind is too active – and we are not Zen budists who can switch off our brains when we choose to. Therefore our mind interferes and we misjudge the shot or change our mind and the mistakes happen.
If we accept the imperfection of our mind, then we accept mistakes as something normal and inevitable. We also know that the same thing will happen to our opponent and this will level out throughout the match.
That was just a short explanation – more for you and for older players – if you want to explain to them how this works.
Once you have shown to the kid how top pros miss, he will understand that it’s impossible to play well all the time.
2. Once he understands, you’ll have to wait for him to have a “bad period” when practicing and then remind him what’s going on. He needs to become aware of these “bad periods” and ADJUST his game for that period of time.
This is crucial. Many players want to keep playing well when it doesn’t work. At some points of the match, you cannot play well.
If you accept that and ADJUST by lowering your risks, playing more to the middle and away from the lines, playing more counter punching tennis instead of going for the lines, you can “weather the storm” and get through that bad period without losing too many points and games.
The problem with bad patches is that the amount of mistakes grows and the player notices that. But the player almost never thinks that this will pass: on the contrary – the player makes a generalization (that’s one big mistake of our “natural” thinking!) and believes that he / she will continue to play like that for the whole match. (or for the whole career!)
The player then loses the confidence in their strokes and their abilities and the whole game breaks down – as you’ve probably seen many times.
The solution is first to understand that there are bad patches of play and that they will pass.
The more you accept them, the sooner they will pass. The more you resist them (and still try to play outstanding tennis) the longer they will stay (because you’ll lose confidence in your strokes since you’ll be missing a lot and this loss of confidence will cause even more errors).
My best solution (having played tennis for 20 years and coached lots of players) is to:
- ACCEPT that bad patches of play happen and that this is out of my control (they happen to the opponent too and it levels out!)
- ADJUST my game for that period by playing higher percentages – looking to stay in the points longer, not looking for direct winners, etc.
- LOOK FOR my best level again but waiting at LEAST ONE CHANGEOVER (2 games) before attempting higher risk play again
This last part is all about experience, knowing yourself and carefully observing the outcome the shots attempted. If I don’t feel my shots well and I miss again, I still keep a high percentage play and WAIT for the feel to return. I don’t force it, I let it happen.
This has proved to work very well for me and my players – the bad patches last very short time.
Coming back to coaching a 10 year old kid: you need to give the kid EXACT instructions ON HOW TO PLAY when he is in a bad patch. PRACTICE that – have a contingency plan for bad patches.
“If you have a bad patch, aim here and here, play shots like this and like this, do not attempt drop shots or drive volleys and look to win points this and this way. “
I leave the specifics to you as I am sure you know a lot about tennis and will find the best solution for your specific situation and that specific kid.
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