What do athletes do but create difficulties for themselves so that they can grow through overcoming them? – Viktor E. Frankl

It’s easy to find yourself under pressure in a game of tennis.

In singles, you’re alone, with no teammates to rely on. You alternate serves, with each service game presenting a chance to be broken. Within each game, pressure can build quickly from long rallies, often decided by a line ball or a mistake (unforced error) rather than a winner. A few of those at the wrong moment and the match is lost.

Since most points end on errors, the general strategy is to play one shot longer than the other person. Get a high percentage of your first serves in. Don’t miss returns. By playing good enough, you send pressure back over the net.

It also helps to be talented. Nadal is an example of a player who applied pressure by having seemingly no weakness to exploit. On clay he would whip every shot into something that felt like a “bowling ball” on your racket. Players like him, Andy Roddick says, leave you no choice but to “pick your poison” and hope you get lucky.

Even if you’re one of the greats, pressure is still a factor. They might not admit it, but we can see it expressed in smashed rackets, weird shot selections or slumped shoulders. So if you can be great at hitting the ball, while thriving under pressure, even better.

Djokovic, who famously “takes your legs, then takes your soul”, typifies this sort of player who is strong both mentally and physically. Not only does he win a lot, but he seems more likely to win when he’s a set down. Maybe it’s only against big waves: 5^th set tiebreaks, stadiums filled with booing crowds, that he can reach “the true limits of his capacities.”¹

This ability to withstand and do well under pressure provides a huge advantage. Imagine two equally strong players duking it out for a championship. The pressure steadily increases over the course of the match because neither of them is making mistakes. No one can break serve. Every point starts to matter more than the last. The gravity in the stadium is increasing. When you’re flooded or taken over by pressure, you think you need to be perfect, when good enough is fine. You believe the momentum you had a few moments before is lost forever. Game over.

But the player who can see through pressure notices most of this. They’re able to recognise that the suffocating air in the stadium is quite breathable. The gravity no longer affects them in quite the same way. They’re still missing their first serves, exhausted and drenched in sweat but they’re not blinded by pressure in the same way. Their perception is less distorted.

And because they can see a bit more clearly, they might catch a glimpse, a small recognition that their opponent is suffering in just the same way.

Related writing: Partly cloudy, Swimming under pressure, Inner Game of Nick Kyrgios

1. Tim Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis, Random House, 1974. ↩︎