Archive: Competitive Mindsets

The Desire to Win

March 29, 2024

The best competitors in the world seem to have a maniacal desire to win, which in difficult times, enables them to overcome the challenges of the moment, and to succeed more often than not. Think about Michael Jordan, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, Rafael Nadal, and Monica Seles. All of these athletes were able […]

Learning to Finish Matches

November 8, 2023

One of the many difficult challenges in the sport of tennis is the concept of finishing. Finishing a point; finishing a game; finishing a set; and of course the ultimate challenge, finishing a match. If you want to win more matches, you must learn to finish. There is no clock at the end of the […]

Choose to Be Optimistic

August 30, 2023

At the beginning of a tennis match, you don’t actually know who will win. Based on rating or ranking, you may be able to make an educated guess as to who will emerge victorious, but there is no guarantee of that outcome. It is uncertain. How you feel about uncertainty, in tennis and in life, […]

Embracing Uncertainty

August 21, 2023

You as the Fan If you are a sports fan, you likely get excited to watch your favorite teams and players compete, especially in big events. You watch the competition in person or on television, because you want to see who wins. And before the event starts, you don’t know who is going to win. […]

Continuing to Believe in Yourself When You Aren’t Getting Results

August 4, 2023

The reality of tennis is that you will lose. Points, games, sets, and matches: you will lose all of these during your tennis career. Dealing with loss comprises a large part of the tennis player’s journey, and there is a level of suffering associated with all of this losing. Putting these experiences into perspective becomes […]

Momentum in Tennis

July 20, 2022

Do you think momentum is a real thing in tennis? How about in other sports? I ask this question of you not as a fan, but as a player – as someone who lives through the competitive experience. Because a concept like momentum, whether you believe in it or not, comes down to how you […]

How To Earn The Win

June 24, 2022

Note: This is a follow up to a recent post on How Not To Lose. If you haven’t read that post, go ahead and do so prior to reading about how to earn the win. In my previous post on How Not To Lose, you learned what to do in the face of overwhelming pressure […]

Enjoyment And Competition

May 27, 2022

Introduction One of the most important aspects of being competitive is the enjoyment of playing the game and wanting to compete. For truly competitive athletes, competing and battling is something they want to do, and they embrace that aspect of sport. When someone asks them to play, they eagerly say YES! They can’t wait to […]

How Not To Lose

May 18, 2022

“Before you learn how to win, you have to learn how not to lose.” On the path to becoming a great competitor, you will learn many lessons, and one of the most difficult lessons in sport is learning how not to lose, how not to give it (the point, the game, the match) away. The […]

Keep Your Expectations Low and Your Standards High

April 22, 2022

In the fall of 2020, Iga Świątek emerged from relative obscurity to capture the women’s singles title at Roland Garros. During the tournament and afterwards, Świątek talked about the importance of keeping her expectations low in matches, and simply focusing on playing one shot at a time. She wasn’t going onto the court “expecting” to […]

Winner’s Creed by Bill Tym

March 6, 2022

Bill Tym’s Winner’s Creed is a philosophy of performance excellence that should be studied by all athletes (not just tennis players) who aspire to become champions. The creed describes the controllable aspects of performance that are vital to competing your best on a given day. Even on those days when you are not playing well, […]

Play With Courage

February 9, 2022

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States Courage. In Stoic philosophy, it is one of the four cardinal virtues (wisdom, temperance, and justice are the others). It’s that important. Striving for your potential depends […]

Everything Is Practice

April 1, 2021

“I play better in practice than in competition.” -Nearly Everyone If you’re like most people, you have probably noticed that you play better in practice than you do in competition. You may have even said something like the above quote to a coach, a family member, or to yourself. And it makes sense that most […]

Being Competitive

September 17, 2020

Over the years, I have heard many people describe themselves as being “so competitive.” But if the definition of competitive is solely concerned with beating others and/or winning, then it’s off the mark. To me, being competitive is a process oriented pursuit of mastery in which results are data points to help you improve. I […]

Discipline Equals Freedom – Your Path to Greatness

June 24, 2020

Discipline equals freedom. Have you heard this phrase before? If you’ve read the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, then you are familiar with the concept and this post will be a refresher. Otherwise, you may be confused about the relationship between discipline and freedom. On the face of it, discipline and […]

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