Many coaches and players have told me that “tennis is a game of errors.” It seems like a cup‑half-empty statement but also makes some sense. You hardly win or lose matches by hitting winners. Some points will come from winners, but the majority will be counted after someone misses a shot, whether forced or unforced. The nature of tennis scoring thus leads people to assume mistakes play a central role in the game. Since mistakes count as losses, we veer toward viewing errors with disdain.
Disliking mistakes has a range of hindering consequences. Depending on how the coach or parent responds to their student’s unforced errors, the student may become paralyzed under pressure or avoid training outside of their comfort zone from fear of missing. One could make the student fear mistakes and turn them into a solid player through rigorous training. But, at the highest levels, everyone can play – rigor alone won’t help compete against top players.
The player who endured emotional attacks over missing will have an additional battle from within during each match. So, instead of playing the game, they are dealing with overcoming ingrained fear. For example, I always knew I needed to be aggressive to maintain pressure on my opponent. But the second I missed a shot and judged myself, playing aggressive turned into an impossible task no matter how well I was able to strategize. The player needs to be creative, open minded, and willing to take risks without fear.
Understand that tennis, like other sports, is about us learning physics on the intuitive level. For a moment, forget about scores, winning or losing, and anything involved with the race for a higher rating. We hit a round object with another object over a set space and move around to keep the round object in play. There is math and physics involved in every part of the process. Our brain is computing and anticipating speeds and trajectories. We thus train to get more familiar with the possibilities in the space of the tennis court.
So, when you first learn tennis, you take baby steps. Your exploration of the multidimensional map is very limited. The surface area may be relatively small, but the time dimension has almost infinite possibilities. You can play with time by hitting faster or slower, adding varying spins, and changing the timing of when you strike the ball. Every action you take is therefore an exploration of the different variables and their combinations. In other words, you are learning every time you do something on the court.
Why is this relevant to mistakes? Fear changes the way you learn. When you miss, there is often an emotional response that comes after because you judge the error. The judgement and emotions close your mind to what has happened. Instead, the focus is on the judgment and how bad it was to miss.
We all know what fear does to us; it draws attention away from the task into the thing we fear. So, if I am afraid of attacking a short ball off my backhand side because I think I might miss, then I will feel that fear whenever I get a short ball on my backhand side.
Instead of being afraid of mistakes, learn to embrace them as any other shot. You’re in the process of learning at every instance and if you are in the space of flow and not fear, you will be able to immerse yourself in the game and enjoy every bit of it.
