The Mental Game
Resist Reacting Emotionally After Points, an excerpt from “Tennis: Winning the Mental Match””
By Allen Fox, Ph.D. c 2010, all rights reserved Your game will tend to follow your emotions, positive ones producing good play and negative ones, bad play, so you need to control them rather than having them control you. The starting point for this (and probably the most useful single idea in this book) is […]
Follow the “Golden Rule” of Tennis
BOOK EXCERPT FROM “TENNIS: WINNING THE MENTAL MATCH” The “Golden Rule” of tennis is the one simple rule that, if followed, will keep you out of more trouble than anything else. It is: Never do anything on court that doesn’t help you win. Granted, it sounds absurdly obvious, but few people consistently follow it. Adhering […]
Intelligent Strategy Can Lead to Victory
Intelligent strategies can often overcome stroke deficiencies and enable a player with inferior tennis weapons to defeat a physically superior opponent. In matches where the contestants are closely matched physically, strategy is often the deciding factor. I believe that this was the case in the 2002 US Open final where Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi […]
Believing in Yourself
As competitors we are all told, “It is crucially important to believe in yourself.” Our coaches regale us with tales of how great players believe in themselves and how this belief carries them past obstacles and leads to victory in major championships. We are admonished that unless we believe in ourselves, we can work on […]
Champions Take Responsibility and Try to Control Their Destinies
EXCERPTED FROM “THE WINNER’S MIND” High achievers possess a characteristic termed by psychologists as an “internal locus of control.” If we throw out the big words and translate this into English, it means that champions feel they can personally control the outcome of events. This feeling empowers them. They believe that their own efforts will […]
