React, Relax, and Refocus: Struggles of a junior tennis player

WHAT: At a camp for highly skilled junior tennis players, one particular individual is faced with unsteady emotions during match play.  He expresses anger with moves by opponents, match calls, and personal errors.  During final rounds of match play, he doesn’t perform at his best level and is consistently tense whether he is performing well or not during a match.  The central issue faced by this junior tennis athlete is emotional control.  His inability to focus relates to his consistent tension, feeling of anxiety, anger, and poor cognitive ability during matches.  By working on emotional control through relaxation, breathing exercises, and cognitive stress management skills, this junior tennis player will be able to maintain focus and likely improve performance during match play.

SO WHAT: These issues faced by this junior tennis athlete suggest poor emotional control and low cognitive stress management skills during match play.  Easily becoming upset with common match calls is causing this athlete to lose focus on the next serve, swing, and overall match at hand.  Jones (2003) describes a situation where a tennis player becomes upset with a poor line call and continues to stay angry.  Poor attention to the player’s task occurs in this situation, and performance is negatively affected.  This example illustrates the cost of poor emotional control on task focus and performance ability.  To ease his anxiety and consistent tension in match play, this athlete may use a self-talk approach. Describing self-statement modification, Jones (2003) states “positive self-statements have been used in conjunction with other techniques (e.g., relaxation training) in sport settings to reduce levels of anxiety” (p. 477).  One example this athlete may use during a performance error (e.g., hitting outside the line) is “I swung too hard on that serve, next time I know it will stay in play.”  Gill and Williams (2008) discuss Lauer’s three R’s program, which originally was used with hockey players, but can apply to tennis as well.  When our athlete is angered at calls or errors, Lauer would first suggest reacting to the given situation.  Knowing he gets angry, the athlete must acknowledge the error or call and move onto the second R, relax.  When he relaxes, he lets go of the frustration of the call or error and controls his emotions.  Finally, the third R states to refocus.  By refocusing on the task at hand, our athlete has cognitive control and focus on the next serve or final round of the match. 

NOW WHAT: We must help this junior tennis player to work on his emotional control and cognitive focus during match play.  During practice is the time to intervene with this athlete and work on coping skills for stress and emotions.  One example is that during a practice of serves when our athlete hits outside the lines and becomes angry, we stop him and suggest breathing exercises.  Getting him to relax and quickly release any tension is important for concentration and refocusing on overall match play and the particular task at hand.  Jones (2003) explains that athletes can train themselves to use anger to energize themselves for future tasks at hand.  Since our athlete does become so easily aggravated, this technique may be very useful during his match play and could enhance performance instead of hindering it.  Instead of losing focus and dwelling on anger at a poor call or personal error, training to use angry emotions in future play or the next serve is a much better response.  His lack of playing up to potential seems to hurt him during final rounds of tournaments and this also relates to stress, focus, and anxiety.  Instructors at camp can ask about the emotion felt by the athlete following an error or before a final round.  Then, as Jones (2003) suggests, have him use self-statement modifications to help channel and direct that anger in a positive manner.  Example statements may include “I’m feeling (insert emotion) but I know I can use it to my advantage on the next serve,” or “That was a bad line call, next time I’m going to hit the ball just inside the line.” Immediately before the final round, when he is known to lose focus and not play up to potential, our athlete can utilize Lauer’s three R’s as described by Gill and Williams (2008).  First, he needs to react to emotions felt during the final round, then relax and realize he has the capability of playing well.  Finally, our athlete must refocus on the tasks ahead in the final round of the tournament, while remembering to channel his anger in a positive approach to future tasks and serves in the match.  The athlete will be reminded of the three R’s approach in camp by having an instructor that holds up a large “R” sign before a final round of practice.   

CONCLUSION: Our junior tennis athlete is faced with poor emotional control during match play.  This camp for skilled players is a great opportunity to provide him with the knowledge and skills to improve his emotional control and stress management.  Holding onto anger and other emotion in match play is making his performance suffer.  By using self-statement modifications during times of stress or anger in match play, our athlete can have better focus on his match and improve control of anger.  When he feels tense and doesn’t play to potential during final rounds, using Lauer’s three R’s (react, relax, and refocus) will help calm our athlete down, realize he has potential to play well, and focus on the final round of his performance. 

REFERENCES:

Gill, D. L., & Williams, L. (2008). Psychological dynamics of sport and exercise (3rd Ed.). Champaign, IL:Human Kinetics.

Jones, M.V. (2003). Controlling emotions in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 17, 471-486.