Maintain Emotional Control During Big Tennis Matches
Maintaining composure and managing on-court emotions are necessary for optimal performance and enjoying the game of tennis.
Managing emotions doesn’t mean you won’t get angry after a bad line call or a double fault. Emotions are a part of any competitive experience.
Composure just means you able to compartmentalize your emotions and not allow negative emotion to spiral out of control detracting from your focus on the court.
You can probably identify some tennis matches where you experienced emotional meltdowns on the court…
- A bad call here
- An unforced error there
- Some easy points you let slip away
You felt yourself losing control of your emotions. Frustration, anger, hopeless, and helplessness probably come to mind and those runaway emotions eventually caused you to completely meltdown on the court.
Runaway emotions take you out of your game by:
- Increased muscle tension and making your strokes rigid.
- Elevated heart rate and causing irregular breathing which make you tire more quickly.
- Poor concentration and focus making the game appear like it has sped up, causing poor anticipation and interfering with playing the game instinctively.
- Ruminating over mistakes, poor shots, and bad calls which take your mind off of your strategy for each point.
- Feeling mounting levels of anxiety and fear of continued bad play.
- Becoming increasingly negative and self-critical of yourself and your play.
Daria Gavrilova had an emotional meltdown during her Australian Open fourth-round defeat to Carla Suarez Navarro 6-0, 3-6, 2-6.
Gavrilova started the match in great form making only three unforced errors in the first set.
In the second set, she started to unravel as she made 15 unforced errors and 21 more in the third set.
Gavrilova’s whole demeanor changed as emotions got the best of her evident by her verbal outbursts, racquet throwing, ball kicking and negative emotionally-charged on-court antics.
Gavrilova admitted that her inability to manage her highly-charged on-court emotions cost her the match.
GAVRILOVA: “[My behavior] wasn’t great and I’m very disappointed with myself. I was being a little girl. I played very well in the first set. I guess I was starting to overcook it a little bit in the second and got very emotional. Yeah, was just going crazy.”
Gavrilova stated the pressure of playing and advancing deep in the tournament for the first time in her career got to her.
GAVRILOVA: “I got emotionally fried in the second set. I was getting angry with myself, just showing way too much emotion. I’ve never played that deep in a grand slam, so maybe that’s why.”
GAVRILOVA: “It’s not acceptable. I don’t know why I did that. I was terrible. I mean, I played good. But the behavior, I’ve just got to learn from it.”
Gavrilova is a talented, young player who can, no doubt, learn from this match and improve her ability to effectively managing her emotions in future matches… And so can you!
Tip to Maintain Emotional Control During Tennis Matches:
What emotions help you play optimally in the past? What emotions bring out your best play? What emotions cause you to play poorly?
Next, what triggers your negative emotions in past matches? How does it start? Keep in mind that your perception of the trigger causes your negative emotions.
For example, hitting an easy short ball into the net is not frustrating–only you can make it frustrating!
Now ask yourself, “How can I react better to the trigger next time so I can stay in control of my emotions in similar situations?”
This is your new reaction or coping response.
Finally, practice your new reaction to the triggers that upset you on the court by visualizing your new way to cope with them.
FAQ: Mental Meltdowns in Tennis
Does having good composure mean I won’t get angry during a match?
No. Composure is not the absence of emotion, it is the ability to compartmentalize frustration or anger so it does not spiral out of control and take over your focus.
How do runaway emotions actually hurt your tennis game?
They increase muscle tension, making your strokes rigid, raise your heart rate, tiring you faster, and hurt your concentration, which makes the game feel like it is speeding up and interferes with instinctive play.
What’s a common trigger for a mental meltdown on court?
A string of small setbacks, a bad line call, an unforced error, an easy point given away, that compound instead of getting compartmentalized, eventually causing frustration and helplessness to take over.
Have even top pros had mental meltdowns in matches?
Yes. Daria Gavrilova had a visible emotional meltdown during her fourth round Australian Open loss to Carla Suarez Navarro.
Related Tennis Psychology Articles
- Mental Meltdowns on The Tennis Court
- How Cibulkova Learned to Stop Her Mental Meltdowns
- How to Move on After Losing a Tennis Match
- Download our a FREE Tennis Psychology Report
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