one unfortunate Trend in this modern world is that a lot of people stop watching matches and they
watch highlights now the problem with watching highlights of tennis is that while you might be
entertained by watching spectacular shots you will learn absolutely nothing about a specific player
and I'm going to tell you why because when you're talking about players who are playing
on TV Elite level players they're pretty much all play the same in other words they know how
to do everything they have a big serve they have incredible forehands and backhands they might even
have great volleys they're great movers and it's very difficult to pinpoint what the difference is
between each individual player of course some players will have strengths in certain parts
of the game for example some will have a huge serve While others will be very consistent from
the Baseline no doubt about that but generally speaking these players are of a very similar
playing level so when you're watching highlights you're seeing winners and this is something that
any high level player can do even if you go to a Futures tournament you're going to see the exact
same type of winners so the question is what makes the players that are playing on TV different from
those players who are not playing on TV and the difference lies in a very subtle thing which is
how the best players play and the most important stages of the match now you might not necessarily
learn anything by watching for example Federer Nadal Djokovic play incredibly well in the most
important stage of the match because their games obviously are individual so it doesn't necessarily
mean that okay I'm just going to copy what Federer is doing and the most important stages of a match
and this is going to work for me no it's not going to work like that tennis is more complex than that
but I'm going to tell you one example that applies to me I'm 6'5 my serve is my best shot and my
favorite player back in the day was pete sampras and I would study Pete sampras serve placement and
what type of serve he was hitting when he was down break point and what I noticed which was
later confirmed in interviews that I listened to from Sampras that he always went for the ace and
this is quite contrary to what a lot of coaches teach which is to place to serve and go for a
percentage shot because when you go for an ace the likelihood of missing is very high and you most
likely would have to go through a second serve and you might get broken so it makes a lot of sense to
go for a percentage serve but Sampras did it the opposite way he went for an Ace and this
is something that I copied now because my server is my best shot and I have a lot of confidence in
this shot I was able to improve by studying sampers because I was able to save a lot of
break points by going for aces the more I did this the better I got at it now would I have ever learned
about this by watching highlights no because if I saw Sampras aces in a highlight
reel they're completely out of context so I'm sure you get my point it is how the best players play
When the score is that it's most important is what distinguishes them from other players now
I made an entire course on tennis tactics on my website intuitivetennis.com and there's a
whole chapter on score line tactics how you as a recreational player should play certain score
lines in the game of tennis because people often Overlook the fact that tennis is a game after all
the scoring difference makes tennis unique in a way that it builds pressures in US it makes us
feel uncomfortable when the score is a certain way and our game is going to reflect that so there are
certain things that you need to do when the score is a certain way in order to perform at your best
unfortunately I can't tell you exactly how you should play under a certain score line because
like I already said every player has their own individual strengths and weaknesses like I said
in my case I'm a big server and I'm going to use my serve as an advantage and most important stages
of the match this doesn't mean that this is the right thing to do for example on break point down
for another player who doesn't live and die office serve so you understand what I'm saying I cannot
give you specific tactics for the score line because I don't know how you play every player
has their individual draw strengths and weaknesses but know this you have to play important scores
in a match with the right mental attitude that I can tell you and these score lines are going to
be 30 all deuce add in at out 30 40 30 love 40 40 love these are important score lines that cannot
be overlooked you have to play with the right mental attitude and what is that well you have
to play with a lot of intensity and you have to tell yourself that you're going to try really
hard on that particular Point see let me just give you the example of 40 love that is one of
the most common traps that a lot of players fall into especially at the recreational level or to
junior level so what happens is when you're up 40 love you think you have the game one
and now all of a sudden you relax mentally you might not play that point at 40 love with a lot of
intensity you end up losing it now it's 40 15. all of a sudden you lose this point and it's 40 30 and
the game is extremely tight so it went from you thinking that you won the game easily to all of a
sudden a super tight pressure moment at 40 30. so what you got to tell yourself is that when you're
40 love up it's just as if it was 40 30 you have to trick yourself you have to ignore the fact that
you're up by a lot and what's going to happen in turn is that you will rarely lose games when you
have 40 love where if you're not aware of this mental trap there's going to be a lot of games
where you have 40 love and you end up losing as a result of relaxation I made a video a couple years
ago where I told you to stop watching highlights but I didn't really go into as much depth as I
did today why I think that watching highlights is not a good thing it will not teach you about
the subtleties of tennis it will not show you the true quality of a player and I recently listened
to an interview with Ivan Ljubicic one of the greats number three in the world coach of Roger Federer
it was on the functional tennis podcast and Ivan was asked the question what is the difference
between some of the grades the Grand Slam champions and somebody like you who was very
close to them but yet there was a difference right so we're talking about maybe the big three versus
everybody else and Ljubicic brought up the example of Google and he said that when he played Google
he had a very easy time holding serve now I'm not exactly sure why that is because in my mind Google
has a phenomenal return but in any case Ljubicic also had one of the greatest serves on tour maybe
of all time and he had a easy time holding serve against Google but when the score got tight for
example 5 all 30 all out of nowhere guga would start hitting down the line backhand winners and
Ljubicic explains that therein lies the difference between the great players and the greatest players
the greatest players of all time manage to find their absolute best game in the most important
moments and what I can tell you that this is not something you're gonna ever be able to pick up
when you watch highlights and what you should do instead is commit some time and watch a full
match another problem that you're going to run into by watching highlights is that you're going
to think that tennis is all about Winners and you're not going to see the errors because even
at the elite level there's a lot of errors that are committed and you can sometimes see when a
player is playing phenomenally well and all of a sudden it gets close in the score and that player
starts to play poorly and now all of a sudden you have an insight into this player's psyche and this
could maybe explain why this particular player is struggling at the elite level maybe there's
a confidence issue again you will never be able to find this out if you watch highlights because
it's going to be one winner after the other so I'm telling you that you're gonna gain a
lot by watching full matches yes I know in this modern world everything is short we have a short
attention span but tennis cannot live with a short attention span it requires patience when you play
you're not going to win the match quickly you have to be patient and if you want to learn something
by watching tennis it requires patience as well so for that reason stop watching highlights