When I think back on the worst matches I ever played, it regularly came down to what tennis players refer to as playing “tight.” Usually, this happened when I had already beaten this person a few months earlier or I felt I was entitled to win based on my ranking. Whenever I had this mentality, my opponent seemed to have the reverse. They were going to play their heart out with no sense of entitlement. I could bore you with every example throughout junior tennis and college, but a couple stand out in my mind that made the biggest impact on how I compete today.
The year is 2000 and I have finally gotten my ranking up after a lot of hard work. I am playing in the NC Junior State Closed. The year before, I had a “Cinderella run” where I came in as a 15-year-old and finished third. So, the next year I came into the tournament seeded third. As I sat on my high horse I looked at the draw and saw I played a kid first round whom I had never heard about. But, being young and overconfident, I figured he was terrible and I would have an easy match. I felt that since my name was in red I was going to win and he was going to have to battle it out in the back draw. My sense of entitlement and my expectation that he would just give me the match turned out to be a good learning experience. The kid was good, but I seemed to be playing “not to lose” rather than to win. On the other side of the court, my opponent was hitting out on the ball, moving me side to side and playing to win. I was capable of winning that match, but my mentality of “I’m the #3 seed, I should be given this match,” didn’t quite pay off and I was off the court in about an hour.
The year is 2003 and I had just come off winning the 4A singles title for Myers Park High School. I had the best tournament of my life and beaten guys that were better than me (ranking wise) almost the entire tournament. I had never played so care free and smart in my entire life. After all, I was not supposed to win that tournament. But, a week later I had to play two of the same guys I had beaten in the quarter and semi-finals in the team playoffs. I came into each match arrogant and thought my title of “State Champ” would get me through the match alone. Needless to say I lost both of those matches and didn’t play close to the level I had played a week earlier.
A sense of entitlement is one of the many struggles tennis players go through and one of the major reasons they lose matches they shouldn’t. You have to bring your best every match no matter who you are playing and leave what you have accomplished in the past because most of the time, that stuff doesn’t matter. But, lucky for me, I had some of my best wins against guys who thought the same as me. If they had played their best, I was toast. This is also true in real life to. No one is entitled to anything; you have to bring your best to the table every time you perform on the court or interview for a job. So, next time you play Joe Schmo, make sure you erase your ego and perform like you know how to.
-Coach Dennis, October 2009
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