Embrace the Change(over)

Neglecting the changeover during a match is detrimental to your game. You practice your serve, your forehand, your backhand, your volleys, but when do you ever practice your changeover? When is the changeover ever spoken of?  Do you even consider the changeover as being part of a match? The changeover is in tennis for a reason, and taking advantage of it means having a leg up on the competition.

Great tennis players play off of muscle memory. They practice their skills until they don’t have to think about it anymore, and therein lies success in tennis. Success follows when you don’t have to think about doing something, your body just responds. While at a tennis conference, I listened to the speaker talk about how great tennis players were right brain dominant. The right brain is understood to have more of the artistic functions. Playing amazing tennis is an artform as much as it is a science. Every player expresses themselves differently, and it shows when watching them. Failure in tennis comes, very often, from overthinking things on the court. The ball will be traveling toward you when all of a sudden, you cannot decide whether to hit a backhand or forehand.  Sometimes your feet will get stuck because you’re in your own head, as opposed to reacting to the ball.

Since tennis is as much an artform as a science, when does the science aspect come into play? The answer: The changeover. All too often, I see players use the changeover to grab a quick drink before moving to the other side of the court and continue play. Once in a while, they’ll sit down on the bench to take a physical and mental break. What good does it do a player to think on the court and mentally rest on the bench? That is backwards thinking. While on the court, a player should endeavor to lose themselves into a pre-set plan of action with their body acting and reacting to the circumstances.

The changeover should look something like this. A player sits on the bench to relax and rehydrate, while going over in their mind what exactly transpired during the two games that were just played. Were they having success or failure? What contributed to those outcomes? What changes should be made if any? After working those things out and internalizing them, get back out on the court and make it happen. This is often referred to as the power of visualization as well.

The point here is that if you’re not taking full advantage of the changeover, you’re helping your opponent. Work out a plan on the changeover so that you don’t have to do as much thinking on the court; allow your body to just play. 

Paint a picture of victory on the court while coming up with the idea of that picture on the bench.