If you’re a tennis player who gets upset or disappointed when he misses a shot, then consider the following philosophy…

Let’s take two club players who can play reasonably well (3.0 NTRP and higher) and give them 3 balls to rally cooperatively and play at their preferred pace.

How long will it take for them to eventually miss all 3 and start picking them up again?

30 seconds? 60 seconds? 90 seconds?

Note that a typical rally shot travels around 2-3 seconds from one side to another. So in a 30 second rally there are 10 to 15 balls exchanged and that’s 5-8 per each player.

How many 15 shot rallies can you hold if someone on the other side plays a little bit left – right and you try to do the same?

Not many. Even I at probably 5.5 or 6.0 level when I play with my friend who is about the same level typically keep the ball in play for about 5 to 20 shots total in a rally.

A 20 shot rally means that I hit the ball 10 times and moved around too.

And a 20 shot rally at our pace lasts about 40 seconds – which is a lot! Playing tennis for 40 seconds without a rest is very demanding.

Of course, I am not talking about pushing the ball in super slow motion to the middle of the court, I am talking about playing at my preferred pace and moving opponent around slightly. I am also not taking any crazy risks and looking to hit the lines.

The average duration of a point (men) at the 2003 US Open was less than 6 seconds and 93% of the points lasted less than 15 seconds.

My point is this: at any level of tennis, someone will miss the ball in a matter of seconds.

Sure, there will be some winners too, but in general, the point will be over because someone made an unforced or a forced error.

See how Roger Federer misses a ball sooner or later. What are your expectations?

If you are now getting upset because you missed a ball, then you were probably expecting to play indefinitely? Or that only your opponent was going to miss?

Because getting upset or disappointed means only one thing: you did not expect to miss.

Now look at that belief and then look at the reality that I described above and see where the problems arise.

You’ve been living in a dream world.

You actually thought that you will not miss the ball despite the reality proving you wrong over and over again, probably for years.

You need to agree with reality and accept it.

Almost every point will end by someone missing the shot and if you play with someone of your level, you’ll miss around 50% of the total shots missed.

That’s reality.

This mistaken belief that missing shots is bad is the most damaging in practice sessions.

I see players who become disappointed because they missed 6 or 7 shots from a basket of 50 balls that I fed to them.

What did they expect? To never miss?

If the player never misses in practice situation, then the drill is obviously too easy. It’s not realistic and it doesn’t force the player to develop.

As soon as the player stops missing, the coach needs to increase the difficulty of the drill.

And if the player doesn’t understand the principles of tennis training and that errors are a normal part of tennis (just open your eyes now and see how each point that begins will end in a matter of seconds where in most cases someone will miss the shot!), then he is living in an unrealistic dreamland.

In when your dreams clash with reality, guess who always wins?

The lesson to take from this article is this: realize that almost every point ends with someone missing. In 50% of the cases that will be you.

It doesn’t mean that your backhand sucks or that you are a bad tennis player, it means that the game of tennis is too difficult for you to master it and keep the ball in court all of the time.

(Sure, you can attempt to push the ball in the middle of the court and try to never miss, but do you win matches? Definitely not against a quality club player.)

And regardless of how good you are, you’re going to miss those shots if you play an opponent of your level.

Some players think that once they become better, they will miss less. Sure, they will miss less of the shots when an easy ball comes over the net.

But since they have improved they will most likely play against a player of a higher level who will give them a more difficult ball.

They’ll miss again – a similar percentage of shots as they missed when they were “not so good”.

So the story never ends.

If you believe that if you become better you’ll miss less, you’re wrong. You’ll always face a similar percentage of missed shots – around 50% of total mistakes in the match or in the friendly cooperative rallies.

And you’ll have higher goals. Not missing an easy ball will not be a challenge any more. You’ll get no special satisfaction from not missing an easy ball.

Now you won’t want to miss a heavy top spin shot landing deep near your baseline. And if you happen to master that one, you’ll set sights on a more challenging goal again.

And once you do, you’ll see that you miss a lot of shots again. You’ll never be satisfied and you’ll always leave the court in slight frustration.

Isn’t that sad?

The key to enjoyment and success is to accept those 50% of total shots missed as something completely normal. (Which it is – this is not some positive thinking mumbo jumbo!)

Accept reality as it is and you’ll find out that you’ll actually start to miss less. The shot that you just missed will have no effect on you on the next point. You’ll accept it and play the next point totally focused.

And you’ll also start to really enjoy tennis – as you will note only the good shots and the winners and not really pay attention to the missed shots. They will be only a neutral feedback for you to adjust for the next point.

What worries most people is that they believe that the only way to improvement is to feel bad about yourself and then punish yourself through internal negative self-talk (or even an audible one) and then somehow they’ll become better.

Not true at all.

You improve automatically if you are placed in a challenging situation and you’re working to overcome it. It doesn’t matter at all how you feel.

Your brain is stimulated by tough conditions and is adjusting all the time and learning from every new situation.

There’s no need to feel bad or scold yourself. That won’t accelerate learning. It will in fact slow it down.

The fastest way to improvement is to be in the zone and not get emotional at all.

Just hit the ball over and over again and note what happened with it and then try to adjust on the next shot. That’s how you improve in the fastest possible way.

Let me give you one more specific example which shows how unimportant getting upset or disappointed it is when it comes to an error here and there. (Note – most people don’t even like missing once!)

Let’s say you hit 200 backhands in one practice session and you hit in 150 and missed 50. You’re not really happy about that.

You believe that if you hit in 180 balls in and missed only 20 you would be happier. That may be the case but let’s now look at reality.

The goal of today’s practice IS NOT to make you happy right now at the moment.

The goal of today’s practice to get you to hit 200 balls so that you receive plenty of feedback and develop your feel and other skils.

You’ll do another practice session tomorrow and many sessions will follow.

If we fast forward 6 months in the future and take a look at your backhand performance now, do you think it would make any difference whether on that one practice session 6 months ago you missed 50 balls or 20 balls?

I surely hope that you see that it makes no difference whatsoever. Because in the past 6 months you will have hit maybe around 1000 backhands per week which results in 24,000 backhands in 6 months.

Again, do you think 30 missed balls on one Tuesday afternoon at 6.34 PM makes any difference?

NO, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter at all. What really matters is that you hit 24,000 backhands with full focus and a positive attitude.

That’s what makes a difference and not missing ONE BALL! And yet so many players put so much importance on that one single shot that they miss and they wish they didn’t.

Use your brain, think logically and realize through the examples above that it doesn’t matter at all.

Go out there, practice hard, stay positive and you WILL improve – whether you miss 23 backhands today or 27.