How Top Tennis Players Handle Failure and Pressure

There was a guy called Richard Krycheck who won Wimbledon and they decided to change him to A1, handed backhand and it was terrible. And I said to him, Richard, have you ever thought how good you would have been? He said. I think I would have been 30 or 40 in the world. It made tennis so simple for me. I knew exactly what I had to do. Well, we're back again Millie, very good and well done with your part of the interview and now it's your chance to make me sweat, so go for it. OK, I feel like these questions are not too bad, actually.

OK, OK, what's the best piece of advice you've been given as a coach? Can be coaching, anything. It's interesting actually. I got it off a player that I didn't actually coach much, but it it, it really altered my thinking about coaching a lot. And there was a guy called Cry Check who won Wimbledon when I worked at it. I played and worked at a Dutch club, the Metzelais in scavenging a really nice club. Maybe one day you'll play there. And he had a 2 handed backhand as a junior and he won top. So he was a top European junior and he was supported by the Dutch Federation and they decided to change him to A1 handed backhand.

And it was terrible. And I couldn't understand this. The reasoning behind it was crazy, in my opinion. And, and really and truthfully, he kind of had to either leave the federation or carry on with the one handed backhand. So he carried on with it. He needed their support. And then, you know, after he had won Wimbledon, we were sitting having a coffee at Wimbledon and and I said to him, Richard, have you ever thought how good you would have been and maybe how many slams you might have won if you kept that two handed backhand?

And he said, of course, be crazy not to. But his answer floored me. He said, I think I would have been 30 or 40 in the world. Really. Wow. Explain. And he said, well, this is what happened. He said, you know how bad the backhand was and let's be honest, through my pro career it was always a bit of a weakness. I had a good slice approach and I was very competitive and I thought, okay, I've got to do this and how am I going to win without a backhand, just a slice backhand while I work on trying to get a bit of a back end game.

They said, well I had to start really cranking my forehand and I had to start running around every backhand that I could and I didn't want to be on the baseline. So any short ball I had to go in. So knife backhands and go in and try to take every forehand and go in as much as possible. So my volleys start to really improve and I had a certain volley because I had to avoid the baseline. And he said the thing about it is it made tennis so simple for me. I knew exactly what I had to do, and then I just got really, really good at it and my backhand did improve.

And what trigged in my head is I went, holy moly. What players need to understand, it's about the whole package. How does the whole package come together to be effective? Because so many players are always working about, you know, if I don't get my backhand better and I don't have this great backhand or I don't have this, I don't have that. Until I have that, I can't be really, really good. But the reality is you got to look at your package and say what makes my package effective and get better and better at that package.

And I'd say after that conversation, I stopped looking at players to see what was not good in their game. I started looking and saying, OK, what would the package look like if they were a pro? If I couldn't see that vision, it was a player I couldn't work with. I had to see a vision of how they could be a pro given what they had, obviously with improving things, but what was it that was going to allow them to win matches? And if you look on tour, there have been so many players with holes in their game, but very effective.

Yeah, Nicholas, good for one. I mean, slice both sides, you know, I mean, with the backhand was good, but slice forehand, but manage the package extremely, extremely well. The other thing I realized from that about weaknesses, because then I started thinking about, you know, other players, you know, Pat Roth, the Edberg, not the greatest forehands, you know, but they weren't that bad. And I started to realize that when somebody has a weaker area, it actually is a strength because if you've got a weaker forehand, for instance, and I get a midcourt ball and I normally would go into your backhand side, but I think in my head, yeah, but the forehand's weaker.

I need to go there. By making that decision to change my pattern immediately raises the risk of me making an error because I'm doing something I don't normally do. And then the second thing, which is psychologically really hurting is let's say I do execute to your forehand and you hit a winner off it. Now it's like, well, you know, it's supposed to be weak. I'm supposed to win the point if I go there. And now I've gotten burned. And what that creates is a little bit of hesitancy around what to do.

And that that's where weakness, if the player understands that, yeah, I have a weaker shot, but it's not that bad and I can still hurt people off and I can still do things off it. So that is actually a strength because it puts doubt in their mind in yeah, I want to go there because I should get, you know, some joy, but I can also get hurt from there. And when the people play and they get a little hesitant, again, it raises the chance of them making mistakes. So that conversation, I'd say really, really helped my coaching a hell of a lot.

And then the other thing that I think most coaches learn over time is, is less is, is more timing of when you say something is really important and you don't have to, you know, and when things are going well, don't mess it up by coming in and and talking a lot to the player. If they're on a good track, kind of support yet keep going, you know, and stuff don't get in their way. Yeah. I agree. Cool. OK. I have another one. Yeah. So I talked about how I I think tennis players have to deal with setbacks and challenges.

How do you overcome challenging situations or kind of failure? I, I think failure is normal. I mean, if you're not that good at something, you're not going to just say, OK, I want to be good at this and be good at it. You're going to fail a lot before you get good at it. And if you get really good at it and you're competing, you compete against other people who are very good at it. So then that's just a contest. And losing is not failing. Losing is losing a contest between two people or two teams that happened to be very good.

And that's going to happen on any given day because everybody plays within a range. You know, you're ranking, you say you're 430, but on one day you might be 250 in the world and on another day 600. That's a pretty wide range. So if somebody is, you know, 80 in the world and playing against you, you ought to lose. But The thing is that person is 80 in the world, can also maybe play at 300 level. And if you're playing at your 250 level and they're playing at their 300 level, there's a nice little space there where that match is highly competitive and it's antibodies.

So I think dealing with failure is so much about how you talk about failure and actually kind of get it out of your head that what are you really failing at if you're trying to do something, I think the only real failure is if you want to do something and you just don't try and do it. Because if you try to do it, yes, you will fail while you're getting better at it because there's no other way. I mean, I've never seen a baby just stand up and walk. Yeah, they fall down a lot, but they just keep getting up and go.

They don't go. If I don't walk in the next five tries, I'm giving up. They just don't do that. They just doing it until I get good at it. So yeah, I, I don't know if I really answered your question, but, but that's how I try not to actually think of things as failure. It's kind of just if I'm not winning at something, I'm not doing well at something, I just got to get better at it. No, that hasn't Today I think, OK, I have one. Was there something there about challenges that I missed? I suggest how do you come over to overcome challenging situations or failure.

I gave you the option I. Think, one thing I think about challenging situations is this is whatever you're going through is going to have a result. And I'm not just worrying in competitive tennis or in life. You know, you're going through a move, you're going through a relationship breakup, whatever it is, it's going to have a result. It might not be the result that you want, but it's going to have a result. And so if it's going to have a result, you have to learn how to just cope with the result.

And I think you can get a lot of confidence just by thinking, and this is something that I think of is I believe I can cope with adversity now. I don't know if how much adversity I can deal with. You know, I've not been in a war or something like that, so I don't know. But I do have a lot of confidence that I can deal with a lot of adversity. And because of that, that means that whatever is thrown my way, I will cope. It doesn't mean I'll like it or not like it, but I will cope with it. So whatever is coming my way as a challenging situation, I feel like I will cope with it and and that really helps me get through any challenging situation is that in the end, whatever the result is, I'll cope with it whether it's for me or not so well for me.

And does help when you've been through stuff knowing that you are capable of getting through it. Yeah. Well, you mentioned it earlier, you know, when we spoke is that, you know, you've been through the really down, so you're not afraid of it anymore because you know that you can cope with it. OK, I have one more. Yeah. What is your greatest strength on the court and then away from the court? As a coach, yeah, think on the courts, by and large, I've always been able to make learning fun for players.

I've always seen learning as something that should be enjoyed and found ways to make learning fun and, you know, going through hard stuff fun. So I think sense of humor on the court and off the court is a really important part. I think off the court, I think I've always been very good at inspiring players to see more and believe that they can get more. And not just through motivational words, but actually getting a very giving a very clear picture of if you get better at these things, then good things will happen.

You just don't know when, which is what you went through is you did a lot of hard work and you did good work and good things happened, but you didn't know when that would happen. And often it's a lot more delayed than we would like, but it will happen. And so I think giving players a very clear picture of how it's going to happen. I think in in even my online mindset work that I do with athletes and business people is helping them get clarity under pressure. It's like, how do I come through this with a pretty clear head and what I need to do that gives me real confidence that I'm going to actually do well at this.

And I think the other thing is I'm pretty good at hearing the whole story and then getting to another the problem and going, well, what you're actually feeling or what actually is happening is and then it's easy for the person to go, yeah, I see that. Yeah, my coaches were good at that in college. You come to them with a problem and they go, well, actually maybe it's this. And I'm like, I didn't see that. Yeah. Like a different perspective things I think. Yes, you can reframe things. Yeah. You know, like, you know, losses.

If you can reframe it as every loss is one step closer to the winning streak, it really helps with coping with losses. Yeah. Because if you don't believe you, you know you're going to have a winning streak again, then why are you playing? Yeah. So if you believe you are going to have a winning streak again and. And history tells you that you always had winning streaks, even when you were bad, you would have had winning streaks. So, you know, it's not like it's going to disappear. That will keep happening.

And of course, when you have longer winning streaks, then really good stuff happens. But even when you've had long winning streaks, you can go on very bad runs as well. You know, you look at someone like Medvedev, you know, pretty much had a horrible year last year and you know, people writing them off in a way, you know, I mean, it's all different levels of writing off and stuff. But you know, come back now really strong, you know, you know, winning streaks, they are what makes the difference in a career, winning streaks, not how many losses you have at the end of the day.

I mean, this is an extreme example, but if you play a Slam and you win seven matches in a row, you win a slam at the end of the year, you're going to be ranked very, very high. If you go 7 and and 20 could have 21st round losses and those seven wins and you're going to be sitting pretty, pretty good. Yeah, that's an extreme example, but you know, that's winning streaks is what really counts. No, definitely. Yeah. What didn't, Dave gave me some good advice because I remember the stuff I struggled with as well is when I was losing, my team was winning.

And for me that was so confusing because like personally I was losing. I was losing a lot of like 3 setters, like 75. I'd be serving for like 5-4 and lose 75. But at the team we were like undefeated and he was like winning is confusing. It is because, you know, personally I'm not doing great, but then I have to sit around and be like team wise with unbelievable. Well done guys. Yeah, I know. It's it's confusing. Winning is a confusing thing. Sometimes, yes, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you win a lot.

You get different problems, but they. Good problems to have, yeah. But I mean, at the end of the day, life in tennis is a problem machine. You can't wish problems away. You just got to learn how to cope with them. You do great. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. You've been a fantastic guest. I love your, I'd say quiet confidence in terms of in yourself. I can see you. Like I said, you're very relaxed in in your own skin and it shines through. And I'm sure that there's a lot more success ahead of you because if you just keep doing this, you're going to get better.

Exactly. And have a great, great summer season as well. Yeah, you're going to play the clay. Not sure. Maybe. I might venture to clay, I might play. I think I might play German club league maybe as well experience that. Maybe then it's gone to the clay. So it's a. Nice introduction to it. Get paid to learn. It's a good thing, you know. Yeah, yeah. But then grass season comes a lot quicker than you think as well. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, comes around. Well, six weeks goes pretty quick. Yeah, 6-8 weeks.

But really good luck. I I follow your progress and thank you. I look forward to seeing some great results from you. Thank you very much. Take care. Thanks a lot. Thanks. No worries. For watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel, if you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform. See you in the next one.

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