The feeling when you are walking onto the court bag over your shoulder, and you start to feel the butterflies in your stomach and your muscles start to tense up. Then you start warming up, nice and easy breaths and you start to loosen up. The tension in your body releases and you are in the zone. The racquet spin happens and everything comes right back when you are going up to serve the first point. You have to fight the jitters away and make sure that you don't let them take over. I will talk about why tennis is more mental than physical, why the jitters happen, how I get rid of them, what will happen if you don't fight the jitters.
Tennis is an all mental game because, without the mental aspect, it's just who can hit the ball harder. In my time of playing tennis, I have seen really good players lose their match just because their mental game was completely off. The mental aspect of tennis is what to do next, what shot to hit next and how to hit it. There are a million different things that you can do in tennis and you have to choose before every single point because one wrong choice can change the match. Anyone can be strong and fast but that's not what makes you a good athlete, your mental game is crucial in all sports. In tennis, you can play really good people and have a chance of winning just because the other person missed a couple of serves and lost it mentally. You have to keep your mental game in check at all times when playing tennis because if you don't then the game could slip away in a heartbeat.
Ahhh the jitters, they can be an athlete's worst nightmare. When you are walking out onto the court and you know that you have people watching you and that your team needs you to win, you start to feel the butterflies and the jitters. The jitters happen because you know that people are counting on you to win and then you feel pressured to win and feel like if you don't then you are a let down to everyone. That is why you have to adapt and find a way to get rid of them otherwise this game is out of your hands.
I have had the jitters many times, in fact, I still have them when I play big matches. I have learned over the years to easy fight them away. My goto thing to do is listen to music and zone myself into a focused mindset. That is what I always do before games and when I am walking onto the court they do come back again but breathing and stretching make them go right away. You have to learn and adapt to them to change the way they affect you because you can't let them take over.
If your mental game fails then you will one hundred percent fail. In tennis, if you let your head down because you missed a couple of serves then you will lose the whole match. If you don't fight the jitters away and let them take over you will crumble, even if you are better than the opponent, they will make you internally break down. Having someone get into your head and control the way you play is the worst so you have to fight off the jitters.
Tennis is about how you fight back and recover and that is a massive mental concept. This is why tennis is so mental and you have to think before you do anything. Those reasons are why I think tennis is more mental than physical and with the right mindset you can do anything on the court.
