079 The Importance of Patience in Tennis

Just this week, I was reminded not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times how important it is to be patient when playing tennis. I tend to be a very impatient player, wanting to quickly rush the net and end the point. Unfortunately, this often results in me making tons or errors and giving points and games away to my opponents. So, because I'm playing a singles tournament this weekend and patience is EXTREMELY important in singles, I am working very hard to become a more patient tennis player. The way to do this, I believe, is to (1) realize when you're being impatient, and (2) remind yourself to practice patience on court. The easiest way to recognize that when you're impatient is usually during your serve. If you're rushing through your serve and don't have a plan, meaning you having thought out where you should place your serve and why, then you're probably being impatient. A good way to address this is by adopting a service ritual that you use on every single serve. I talked about this in Episode 4 of Tennis Quick Tips, called Improve Your Tennis Serve Consistency with a Service Ritual . I'll link to that below. To help yourself practice patience, rituals are great but so are little reminders. To remind myself to be patient in my tournament, I've put a little sticker on the inside of the throat of my racquet that says "Patience." That's all it says but that's all of the reminder that I need to tell myself to slow down, have a plan, reduce my errors and wait for my opportunity to hit a winner. Patience - it's an important skill on the tennis court and one that we can develop if we just realize we need it and remind ourselves to practice it. You can find all of the show notes for this episode at: http://tennisfixation.com/quicktips79