‘Like a scary movie’: What goes on in the minds of tennis players

EVONNE Goolagong Cawley has a wonderful description of the dream tennis match. It’s one in which “you can do no wrong, where you fly with the angels”. She reckons she just floated through her first Wimbledon final in 1971 (which she won), not really aware of what was going on, feeling she had nothing to lose.

Pete Sampras had days when he “played in a fog of inevitability and invincibility”. It seemed like he could win a free point on serve any time he wanted: “I could feel the ace ­coming before I hit it.” For Ash Barty, the best parts of the biggest matches were when – everything felt “lucid and transparent”. She boiled it all down to five words: Calm. Clear. Present. Confident. Sharp.

That’s the good stuff: the ball’s as big as the moon and everything moves in slow motion. But things can get bad. Very bad. Even the finest players endure times when everything just seems to slip away.

It happened to Barty in the quarter-­finals of the Australian Open in 2021, a match she lost after seemingly being in control against Karolina Muchova, who even had to take an injury timeout.

Barty later recalled: “I’m up by a set and a break, yet instead of feeling imperious I feel vulnerable, like I have everything to lose. My racquet speed and ball speed drop, and I’m utterly distracted. Why didn’t she pull the pin? I think. How is she still out here? … I’m still in front but I’m steaming and melting now, consumed by self-sabotage.”

Self-sabotage. No wonder Andre Agassi describes tennis as “a tortured perfectionist’s kind of activity”. And Agassi saw it from both sides. He was six games from victory against Jim Courier in the 1991 French Open final. Then he lost, feeling a sense of inevitability and weightlessness as momentum inexorably shifted. In the final game, he said to himself: “Let it be fast. Since losing is death, I’d rather it be fast than slow.”

But a year later, at Wimbledon, still chasing his first grand slam trophy, he saw the strain in his opponent, Goran Ivanisevic, when the big-serving Croat sent down consecutive ­double faults near the end of the final. To Agassi, it was clear: “He’s coming apart. I know it. I see it. No one knows better than me what coming apart looks like. I also know how it feels … His throat is closing. His legs are quivering.”

Goolagong Cawley had to put up with ­commentators ascribing occasional lapses, a dropped set or broken serves, to her Indigenous heritage. Ah yes, they’d say, Evonne has gone walkabout. And while she concedes that her concentration could waver – “my mind wasn’t always on the job … I was a dreamer” – she believes it was a positive as well as a negative. “When I realised I was playing badly, I invariably snapped to attention and gave the next game everything I had, and more.”

Sampras’ stony face seldom gave much away, even when he was trying to ignore an insistent voice inside his head: You had him, you’re in trouble now … Don’t panic, but this is kind of scary … Play safe … play aggressive. He came to believe that listening to that voice could be fatal. “Once you open that Pandora’s box of doubts, all kinds of nasty things come flying out … You have to stay calm and have complete faith in your abilities. It takes a strong mind.” It’s no accident that his auto­biography is called A Champion’s Mind.

For all the talk about technique, it’s what’s inside the skull that matters most. I was once courtside at the qualifying event for the Australian Open, watching players compete for a limited number of places left in the tournament. These were youngsters on the way up, veterans on the way down, solid ­competitors with all the shots and rankings just outside the automatic-entry zone. When I asked a coach, standing nearby, what the difference was between these players and those already in the Open, he simply tapped the side of his head.

It’s all in the mind. At the top level, everyone can serve aces or crunch winners. But will they do it under pressure? This is what separates the best from the rest.

Sampras argues that tennis players always have two opponents – the other player and themselves. “The most important guy you have to beat is yourself – the part of you that’s prone to doubt, fear, hesitation, and the impulse to give up.” Polish star Iga Swiatek, winner of five major titles, believes that mental toughness is the most important thing in tennis.

Not only tennis, of course. Explanations for Greg Norman’s infamous fade-out in the final round of the US Masters golf tournament in 1996, when he turned a six-shot lead into a five-shot defeat, or the Sydney Swans’ heavy losses in their last three AFL grand finals, require the ­insights of psychologists as much as physiologists. “It’s all about mindset,” England cricket coach Brendon McCullum said ­recently. “It’s about getting players who feel 10-feet tall and bulletproof when they go out to play.” Terrific – except that McCullum was talking after his players had folded in a Test series against Pakistan.

All athletes are susceptible to anxiety that affects performance. But tennis players can look and feel uniquely isolated and exposed. Victory often comes to those who stay calm and in control. It’s why players like Swiatek today, and Barty before her retirement, have people on their teams described as “mindset coaches” – those who work on the brain in the same way other team members focus on the body. For Barty it was the guy she calls “Crowey”, Ben Crowe. He helped her focus on how she got through tough moments – using grit and courage – and, when she was contemplating retirement even before her success at the Australian Open in 2022, ­reminded her of her innate competitiveness, apparent even when she was playing pool or golf.

Swiatek’s mind guru is Polish sports psychologist Daria Abramowicz, a former sailor. Swiatek says Abramowicz has made her more confident while giving her insights into her feelings. For her part, Abramowicz talks about managing stress as being the greatest issue for every athlete. While others see a problem, she sees a challenge. Stress, she says, manifests itself in three ways: thoughts, emotions and the response of the body to those things.

When serving to win the Wimbledon final in 2013, Andy Murray realised that his left hand, the hand he had to rely on for his ball-toss, was shaking violently. He’d come to expect the mouth ulcers that would arrive before a tournament, but a wayward hand was a new sign of stress. Murray managed to prevail – unlike Jana Novotna in 1993, when her mental ­collapse after leading Steffi Graf 4-1 in the deciding set of the Wimbledon final reduced her to tears at the trophy presentation.

The language used today may be different – Crowe discusses “negative interference”; Abramowicz describes unwelcome thoughts as “an anchor on the brain” – but the mental side of tennis has been pondered for more than a century. “Big Bill” Tilden, the long-trousered American who dominated men’s tennis in the 1920s, insisted that anxiety was the greatest problem for players. “Worrying over defeats, worrying about whom they may play tomorrow … Worrying, worrying, worrying over their game in some form.” The worriers, he concluded, had forgotten that tennis is a game and lost the ability to have fun playing it.

‘You get mad with yourself, then you get mad because you got mad with yourself. It’s like a snowball.’

Andrey Rublev

There it is, a lifetime or two before Bobby McFerrin: the grass-court version of “Don’t worry, be happy”.

After Big Bill came Rod Laver, a huge influence on future champions such as Bjorn Borg and Roger Federer. The Australian lefty sought to be ­“unflappable on the court, in my mind and my body language”. Poor shots were instantly forgotten; what mattered was the next point. He decided that if he could maintain a positive attitude even when things weren’t going well, that would frustrate an opponent. Laver also tried not to make eye contact with an opponent or react to whatever they said or did. It was all about staying unemotional and not letting the other player into his head. Sounds simple. Rafael Nadal managed it. Someone should translate it into Russian and stick it on Andrey Rublev’s locker.

Ah, Andrey … By all accounts the top-10 player is a wonderful bloke, described by fellow pros as friendly and funny. That’s off the court: Amiable Andrey. On the court? Entirely different. Angry Andrey is the master of meltdowns, a tantrum-thrower so violent that he’s drawn blood by smashing his racquet repeatedly on a knee. And nobody is more aware of how ­unhelpful this is than Andrey himself.

He’s described it as “like a scary movie” ­inside his head when fuses start to blow. “You get mad with yourself, then you get mad ­because you got mad with yourself. It’s like a snowball that starts to be bigger and bigger.” With tactful understatement, a former coach has said: “He’s a little kid in his head. He needs to keep working.” It’s since been reported that he’s tried “energy control”, which is about channelling physical and emotional energy in a positive way.

Rublev could do worse than scour second-hand bookstores for a copy of Timothy Gallwey’s best-selling book, The Inner Game of Tennis, a guide to the “mental side of peak ­performance” that was first published in 1974, a year after Laver’s last appearance in a grand slam final (men’s doubles at the US Open). It’s all about “relaxed concentration” and keeping the mind uncluttered while leaping over ­hurdles of self-doubt and nervousness.
Its success – more than a million copies in print – proved it appealed not only to tennis players. Like Ben Crowe after him, Gallwey found eager pupils in the corporate world. Recognising he was on a winner, Gallwey later wrote, among others, The Inner Game of Golf and The Inner Game of Work.

Buying a book is cheaper than engaging the services of a mindset guru. Which brings us to one of many inequities in professional tennis: those who most need help – all those toiling in qualifying tournaments – can’t afford it. Battlers can’t pay for a full-time coach, let alone psychology sessions. It’s enough to make an aspiring Swiatek angry or hyper­ventilate. The cure for that is to slow down and take some deep, regular breaths. As practised and endorsed by Novak Djokovic.

The man who has won more grand slam men’s singles titles than anyone (24, including 10 Australian Opens) has long been considered one of the most mentally tough players. At key moments in a match, such as a tiebreak, he often goes into lockdown mode, simply refusing to concede any points by making errors. He won’t rush (as Steffi Graf did when losing), pushing the allowed time between serves to the limit with incessant, infuriating ball-bouncing. He’ll also open both eyes wide and breathe in deeply through his nostrils. I used to think this denoted a sinus problem, but no: he’s practising a kind of on-court serenity exercise. Djokovic is a disciple of mindfulness, which is all about staying in the moment and allowing negative thoughts and emotions (frustration caused by a missed volley, for example) to sail on by. He has worked on his mind in the same way he has worked on his lobs and stamina.

‘Trust me, there is a storm inside … And the biggest battle is always within.’

Novak Djokovic

A key part of the process is breathing. Another is letting go. When Djokovic experiences a Rublev moment – and he’s had plenty of those over his long career, ­especially early on – he acknowledges it and moves on. “I may, you know, burst. I scream on the court, whatever ­happens. But then I’m able to bounce back and reset … I might appear to be locked in. But, trust me, there is a storm inside … And the biggest battle is always within.” There it is again: the prospect of self-sabotage.

Some of Djokovic’s own techniques have been used against him. Before taking on the Serb in the 2023 Wimbledon final, Carlos Alcaraz confessed to a psychologist he had been working with, Isabel Balaguer, that he was incredibly nervous. The cure they came up with included calming music on the headphones, slow breathing, and a long lie-down on a physio table. Alcaraz said later (after he’d won) that while it probably looked like he was sleeping, it was all about “controlling my emotions, trying to calm myself and my muscles”.

No doubt Swiatek’s mindset coach has suggested similar techniques. And many others, too. But Swiatek-serenity is still a work in progress. Her results have been unspectacular since she won the French Open for the fourth time last June. During unexpected defeats at the Paris Olympics and the US Open, she looked rushed and rattled, and racked up unforced errors. By November, she’d surrendered the women’s No. 1 ranking she’d held for all but eight weeks since April 2022.

Even when she’s winning, Swiatek often appears to be lecturing herself, muttering between points. She looks focused. She looks intense. She seldom looks like she’s having fun. Perhaps Bobby McFerrin on the headphones could help. After a furore over her ­one-month ban for a drug violation late last year, Swiatek needs cheering up, and serenity, more than ever.

But tennis players are individuals. What works for one will prompt eye-rolling in another. Some may be inspired by psychologists’ mantras about managing emotions and expectations (Abramowicz) or bringing the best version of themselves to the dance floor each day (Crowe). Others may find these no more useful than the verse inside a greeting card.

Sampras was a great believer in training hard, trusting the body and not over-thinking. This was his reflection on a quarter-final against Ivan Lendl at the 1990 US Open: “It was a godsend that at some level I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was simply focused on the job at hand … I just thought, ‘Well, here I am, doing what I’ve always wanted to do … I’m just going to throw the ball up, serve as hard as I can, and hope I hit the line.’ Sports psychologists make a living trying to teach athletes to adopt that attitude, but to me it came naturally. I doubt whether it can be taught, or learnt.”

Hmm. That’s not entirely encouraging for mindset coaches looking for new clients or players hoping to fly with Evonne’s angels or emulate Ash’s game-face – “when I’m so far into my own head or wired into the flow of the ­contest that there’s nothing they could possibly read in my expression”.

As with most things, it’s best to start with the small stuff. Laver, for example, had a ­pre-match ritual that included brushing his teeth and combing his hair. Easy. “Big Bill” Tilden, meanwhile, insisted that a healthy mind can only exist in a healthy body. That meant moderation in all things, except sleep. No alcohol during competition. No “highly seasoned foods or sloppy indigestible desserts”. Water is the best drink, with milk a close second. Definitely no fizzy soft drinks, which cause gas. Are you listening, Andrey Rublev?

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