Four shifts. One better version of you on court.
Tennis is played between the ears as much as between the lines. Here’s how we train it at Hello Tennis.
1. SAY “I GET TO.”
Not “I have to play the number one seed.”
I get to.
I get to test myself against the best player in the draw. I get to chase a career-best performance, right here, right now.
Not “this player has beaten me the last three times.”
I get to have another crack at them.
Same match. Different mindset. This shift is one Ben Crowe — Ash Barty’s mindset coach, and the man behind the Richmond Football Club’s — has built a career on. Flip “have to” into “get to,” and pressure turns into privilege. Nothing about the match changes. Everything about how you play it does.
2. MAKE THE PLAYER NEXT TO YOU BETTER.
Yes, you’re here to improve. But in a squad, on a court, in a drill, you’re also here for the player next to you.
Do the drill properly. Concentrate. Listen to the instruction. Take the feedback. Help your training partner hit a better ball.
Exactly what you’d do for your doubles partner.
Here’s where it gets powerful. Singles is lonely — that voice in your head can get loud, and it isn’t always kind. But talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a doubles partner you’re trying to lift, and something shifts. The self-talk turns positive. The shackles come off. You compete harder, freer, better.
Make the player next to you better. Watch what it does for you.
3. THE 24-HOUR RULE.
Dawn Staley — the championship-winning US women’s basketball coach — talks about this one in Netflix’s The Playbook. She gives herself and her team 24 hours after a win or a loss. Twenty-four hours to feel it. Then she moves on.
Big win? Enjoy it, for a day. Tough straight-sets loss? Feel it, for a day. After that, it’s done. Because dwelling on either one, win or loss, is how you lose the next point, the next match, the next tournament.
Bring that onto our courts. Lost a tight one? You’re allowed one day. Then it’s the next session, the next match, the next opponent — fresh slate, full focus.
4. CONTROL THE CONTROLLABLES.
The wind. Your opponent. A tough call. Even how you’re feeling that morning. Half of what happens on a tennis court, you don’t control. Chase it anyway, and you burn energy that never once moves the scoreboard.
What you do control: your effort. Your attitude. Your routine between points. Your body language after a bad bounce. Your process, shot to shot.
It’s a principle Bill Belichick built a coaching career on — focus only on what you can control, your own performance and output, and let the rest go. Own your work. Do your job.
Bad bounce. Bad call. Tough conditions. Control what’s still in your hands, and let go of the rest.
PLAY. COMPETE. HAVE FUN.
— Coach Russ, Hello Tennis