Tennis Tips : Don’t Worry About Your Opponent’s Ranking
We’re probably all guilty of doing this at some point in our past. We look up details about our opponent and see that they are ranked lower than ourselves. They may have lost to many players who we have beaten in the past and not done very well in any tournaments. We then go on court thinking that this will be an easy game and then the next thing we know is that we start making stupid mistakes. Easy shots go long or we dump them into the net. Our anger and frustration grows and we keep saying to ourselves “I should be beating this person easily”. The next thing we know is that we have just lost the match to a person we “should” never have lost to.
Alternatively, our opponent may have a much higher ranking than us and we go on court thinking that we will lose and we start playing very tentatively and defensive. The end result is the same. If this situation sounds familiar, try out these simple tennis tips.
It is important to realize is that your opponent’s ranking has no relevance at all to the game you are about to play. What is important is that you must always play your game and approach it in the same way, regardless of who your opponent is. Always remain positive and concentrate on your strengths. Every game is unique; your mental state, your opponents mental state, the type of courts, the weather, how fit your are, how tired you are etc. so try and focus on your game and don’t let your opponent’s ranking change your approach. All that matters in the end is who plays better on a given day.
Consider this. If every high ranking player always beat a lower ranked player, then in every major tournament the top eight seeds should always reach the quarter finals. In fact this very rarely happens because it is actually very common for lower ranked players to play better than a higher ranked player “on a given day”. The better ranked players usually win in the long run, but not every single time. Here is an interesting article I found which discusses this in more detail.
So here is a simple tennis tip : Stay focused on your game and don’t concern yourself with your opponent’s ranking.
