I have several emotional scars from being cheated during my junior tennis days. Even though I recently turned 50 (what?!), I can remember two situations like it was yesterday. On both occasions my opponent blatantly cheated me, and both times I did not handle it well. I turned into a hopeless mess and suffered…
Mindfulness and sports go hand in hand. Look no further than George Mumford’s classic book, The Mindful Athlete, and Jerry Lynch’s newest book, Win the Day. Both authors speak to how mindfulness is helpful. If you think about it, beyond the score, the game is all about adversity management, emotional energy management and managing…
This article is the first part of Dr. Ferraro’s series, The Tennis Guru. It appeared in the January/February 2020 issue of Long Island Tennis Magazine. Once upon a time there was a boy named Yin. He was an ordinary boy with ordinary talent. He was not particularly strong or tall or fast. He was…
Remember when you saw Kawhi Leonard draining that last-second three pointer? Or Tom Brady driving down the field with less than two minutes to go? Or more recently, Rafael Nadal’s epic match versus Daniil Medvedev in the season-ending 2019 ATP Finals. He was down 1-5 in the third set, only to pull out the…
Perhaps its blasphemy to say that sports is the predominant 21st Century religion, but it just may be true. Whether you attend church services, a synagogue or a mosque each week, you may have noticed that the pews are relatively empty and that weekly church going seems to be passé. If you have kids…
It was a hot day in mid-August when Joanne walked into my office exasperated, reeling from the last two months of training and stressed because school was starting in just two weeks. She was overwhelmed; thinking about challenging matches, her coach’s judgment about her performance and her own concerns about whether she could live…
The 2019 Championship at Wimbledon served up a startling contrast in personality. The Gentlemen’s Singles Finals pitted the number two seed Roger Federer against number one-seeded Novak Djokovic in front of a sold-out crowd which included Kate Middleton, Prince William, David Beckham, Kate Beckinsale, Stanley Tucci, Jude Law and Eric Bana. At the conclusion…
Are you plagued by excessive negative thoughts during your matches? Are you unable to follow your own game plan? Do you suffer from tentative play that you later regret? Are you calling yourself horrible names in your head? Are you regularly not satisfied with your performance, even when winning? Do you feel you need…
Every year for the past 10 years, I teach a workshop at the Omega Institute in upstate New York called “Tennis Inside the Zone: Becoming More Than an Athlete.” The workshop is targeted toward adult tennis players. We spend the week reconnecting to those unique attributes, characteristics and skills that make us uniquely ourselves….
What’s the most difficult thing to do in tennis? I’d have to say it’s the ability to balance efficient learning with optimal performance. The best players present a growth mindset to maximize learning and improvement and shut down that mindset to perform. Learning is premeditated, performing is about letting go, relaxing and “just doing…