Roger Federer made the understatement of the year in this week’s Sports Illustrated: “people underestimate the role of confidence and self-belief in tennis,…When you feel you can trust your game, it makes all the difference in the world.” This is a man who has won three of the last four grand slams without a coach.<\/p>\n
What does it mean to trust your game? I was practicing<\/a> my serve<\/a> before my match today and I was hitting the ball into the net, straight up into the air, everywhere but into the service box. I didn’t get rattled, I just kept going through my mental program<\/a> and eventually I was hitting a solid serve. This is one small example of trusting your game.<\/p>\n Another example, one I can’t say I’m all that familiar with mind you, would be to serve hard and go for all your shots regardless of the game situation. I tend to tighten up after a few bad serves or during second deuce sudden death points. What happens to interfere? I start to hear voices: “It’s a sudden death point, if I make a mistake now I’ll lose the game and I’ll be down 2-5 and then I can’t make a mistake else I’ll lose that game and lose the set and then my winning record will be below 50% and I’ll be demoted to level 5 and then…” You get the idea.<\/p>\n Oy those words! Better to conjure up images. In Zen Golf<\/a>, Robert Parent suggests you tune into your senses: look around you and see what’s in your visual field, listen to the sounds around you – what do you hear?, sense your body – what do you feel? If you are doing this, you are probably not thinking. If you can use your senses to create a vivid image of the next shot you want to execute, your serve<\/a> or return of serve