The Inner Coach

Every Competitive Tennis Player Must Develop a Basic Philosophy that will guide his approach to each and every match. This set of guiding beliefts will provide a mental framework he will utilize in making important choices on the court. Together with these beliefs, the player must also develop specific goals that will help him establish a successful game plan…Match Goals are covered in Chapter Three. 

Read about  the 8 essential beliefs a player must have for a winning mental game:

The Inner Coach

CHAPTER 1 Philosophy of Match Play

Question: I understand your point about not changing a winning strategy, but is it not also important to keep an opponent guessing?

Answer: I think this is one of the reasons a player makes a change even though he is winning. As long as the opponent has not figured out how to beat you, I would keep winning as many points as possible in the same manner. You have to be constantly aware of and monitoring the percentage of points you and your opponent are winning. At first, you may be winning 90% or more of the points. As long as you are winning a majority of the points, I would continue with that tactic or strategy. As your opponent starts to win more points, you need to understand why it is happening. Is he playing the same way, just better, which allows him to defend your play more consistently or has he countered with a different tactic which helps him win more points. This monitoring will help you develop a sixth sense of when it is time to make a change in order to prevent a momentum shift.

You have to guard against being too creative trying to keep your opponent guessing-that gets many players in trouble. There is time to surprise your opponent which we will be covering in Chapter 6, 7, and 8.  You can keep your opponent off-balanced by alternating working the point with dictating the point explained in Chapter 6 or by successfully defending his tactics and strategy.