Did this a couple of weeks ago at practice, my partner hit a rocket behind my back into the backhand corner I’d just vacated and said “cho”, about three points later she repeated the trick. I’m just pleased we play for the same team in the league!
She was up big in game 4 as well. Will be a tough one for her and coach Hugo.
I feel for her, it is a horrible sensation, hopefully she can understand why it happened and respond to it in a better way next time,
Yes. Gozo, you were not relaxed, first and largest issue. Second is base serve technique.
I have emphasized a lot of these elements with LDM7, we both feel similar on this.
At that level, they are professionals, so things are a bit different. Similar but different, and the difference matters. There are real stakes attached to those matches, and this was an opponent she had never beaten before. This can't be the first time something like this has happened to her.
It is different, but if she can believe that it isn’t…. Matthew Syed wrote about this approach in his book “Bounce”, chapter 6 I just reread it before posting this (good read, he explores what went wrong for him at the 2000 olympics).
Oh, everyone knows the Zen, I don't think it changes the tangibility of the situation. Moreover, by definition, she was the worse player, outperforming her usual level, and she did reasonably expect to lose this match. The truth is that it is very easy to tell stories, and as much as I like "Bounce", it is essentially a collection of Syed stories. Sports psychologists wouldn't make money if this stuff didn't often have deeper even if manageable roots. So of course he has to be humble and say it doesn't always work.
For me, it became easier because I just realized I played better when I was moderately disengaged but concentrated on just playing without caring about the score as nothing other than a result or a strategic input- it started largely in training and flowed over to matches. The thing is that it doesn't always get you what you want when it comes to results, and when results are important, it's very hard to say that you don't care even if the fact that you don't care is what makes you play your best. It's part of the reasons why China has the best players, those guys go through so many selection processes that if you come out on top, it is extremely hard for you to be a choker, because you have played under the pressure of results repeatedly. Of course Lin Gaoyuan exists, but even his "choking" is relative, I can't remember him doing to a clearly worse player other than maybe the insane Noshad Alamiyan match.
That's usually how I feel in training. But, because I usually train with the same guys and have relatively limited exposure compared to them, playing others in real matches is quite different for me. I feel like I have to be more focused as I don't know exactly what's coming.
Have no doubt, I am focused, but I have learned to trust my practice. I have accepted that I cannot do reliably any more than what I have practiced (or what my practice has prepared me for) and that many shots I make are more luck than skill. And you are 100% right, you are likely to perform differently in a new environment, a lot comes down to adaptation. If the score works in our favor, we largely are satisfied, if the score doesn't, we complain or get tense. But on the whole, the only thing you can do is learn and adapt at best based on your practice. Beyond that, consciously trying to do better will interfere with what you have trained given the speed of the game. So there is a level of acceptance that comes with understanding as the wise one said, "Do or do not - there is no try." You just do and let yourself adapt or call into mind the goal state and let the points reinforce it over time. Hopefully you adapt quickly enough to get the win, but sometimes you don't. The only thing that is unclear is if complaining makes you adapt faster - that is a personal empirical question to which my answer is no for myself, but I think it could be different for someone else based on their experiences. But for me, even if someone was to show I was wrong and that if I worked on trying harder, I would play better, I decided that the stress was not worth it. I remember when I was borderline 1950 trying to break USATT 2000. I complained for a long time about it to my coach and my coach felt I was already playing at that level, I just lacked confidence in my play. So what did I do? I started driving to play singles leagues on a weekly basis, sometimes once a week, sometimes twice a week. After I broke 2000 in the leagues, I broke 2000 in tournaments a few months later. After breaking it in leagues in fact, I relaxed and saw that it was more or less inevitable that I would break it as long as I continued to play tournaments.
Talking to yourself is very overrated, Breath control is very underrated. It has become a key part of my serve return strategy and it will likely contribute to my overall game.
Everything suggests that this is the approach I should take as well. I complain about my own game a lot in real matches. I've been back and forth trying to do something about it. Sometimes I've managed to be totally quiet no matter what, but each time I did that it took a lot of self control. I certainly feel worse when I complain, it isn't worth it. At best it has does nothing, at worst it fueled my opponent to play better.
