How many times haven’t you seen a tennis player during practice time or warm up before a match play at an amazing level, only to be a different player once the match gets going?

A lot of tennis players spend relatively little time performing under pressure in their practices. When the critical moments arrises in matches they therefore have had relatively little exposure to messy high pressure game situations with a lot of uncontrollables, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that performance gaps exist between practices & matches.

In other words I do not believe that skills learned in non-pressure practice situations will necessarily transfer to high pressure match situations.

We as coaches need to create a training environment in which we provide the opportunities for the players to learn how to act when they are outside of their comfort zone, how to stretch themselves & find a way to pull through even though everything seems unfair to them & they feel uncomfortable. At exactly that moment when the player feels the most outside of their comfort zone that’s when I’m the most curious of how a player choose to act.

I believe that the best tennis players do not rise their level when they are faced with high pressure situations, instead I believe that they sink to the habits they have developed during messy practice situations.

Therefore I like to include at least 1 messy high pressure situation in each practice in order to close the performance gap (i.g):

1. A game based drill where 1 player has an “unfair” advantage

2. Play a set where the server starts each game at 30-40.

3. Finish the training with a service-, a smash- or a 1 point competition.

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