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THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF
TENNIS PARENTING

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 Copyright
Second Edition 2023
Also Available by Frank Giampaolo
Championship Tennis
(Human Kinetics Worldwide Publishing)
The Tennis Parent’s Bible 2nd Edition
Customized Player Assessment
Innovative Tennis Charting
How to Attract a College Tennis Scholarship
Neuro Priming for Peak Performance
Raising Athletic Royalty:
Insights to Inspire for a Lifetime
The Soft Science of Tennis
Preparing for Pressure
Emotional Aptitude in Sports

Website:
http://www.MaximizingTennisPotential.com
Printed by KDP Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this material may be
reproduced in any form or by any means without the written
permission from the author.

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INDUSTRY EXPERT TESTIMONIALS

“Frank Giampaolo has written a sacred text for maximizing

athletic potential.”
Jon Wertheim, Editor Sports Illustrated, Author, Tennis
Channel, 60 Minutes

“Frank continues to create tools for tennis players and families

to help navigate the pathways of development. This book
offers invaluable knowledge to help players & parents navigate
the emotional aspects of the competitive environment in a
healthy and productive way. A must read, Bravo Frank.”
Paul Annacone, Former Top 40 ATP, Coach of Taylor Fritz,
Roger Federer, Pete Sampras

“This is an impressive and hard-hitting book. As a clinical

psychologist, I strongly recommend it to any parent who wants
to help a child reach peak performance. Giampaolo is a
celebrated and sought-after tennis coach who understands
what works and what doesn’t. Each chapter is power-packed
and filled with sound advice on how to maximize performance.
There’s no psychobabble here, only what makes practical on-
the-court sense. Don’t just buy it. Study and apply its principles
as you encourage your child toward athletic excellence.”
Clinton W. McLemore, Ph.D., Founder, Clinician’s Research
Digest, Author, Inspiring Trust: Strategies for Effective Leadership,
APA Award for Outstanding Contributions to Professional
Development in Psychology, California

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“As a former top ATP Touring professional, now the father of
two budding competitive tennis players, me and my wife go
through all the same junior “pitfalls” as all the other parents.
No matter that I was top 10 in the world and my wife played
D-1 tennis at Virginia Tech, this junior tennis world is full of
“derailment points,” none more devastating to a junior tennis
player than parents doing the wrong thing.
Frank’s writing is unapologetic and straight to the point. He’s
got the guts to share what coaches and parents should be
teaching around the world. In this practical masterwork, Frank
showcases common problems and provides clear and practical
solutions that every parent and coach needs to apply on a daily
basis.”
Johan Kriek, ATP, Multiple Grand Slam Champion Florida

“I’ve known Frank for a long time. He’s definitely one of the
best in the business regarding the mental side of the game.
Enjoy this great book.”
Eliot Teltscher, Former #6 ATP, Grand Slam Champion, &
Former USTA Director of High Performance, California

“In his new book, Frank Giampaolo has succeeded in giving

parents profound insight into the most important and difficult
issue in creating true champions. In “The Psychology of
Tennis Parenting,” Giampaolo shows how the focus on
process, effort, and empathy is the true secret in developing
great players and great people.”
Tim Mayotte, Former ATP Top 10, Massachusetts

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“Frank Giampaolo has done it yet again. I have had the
pleasure of reading most of his 10 great books, but “The
Psychology of Tennis Parenting” is his best and most relevant
publication to date! He absolutely nails it when addressing one
of the most important challenges facing youth sports today –
that of the role of the parent in the development of the athlete.
Frank understands the importance of the parent’s role in this
development. We all want the best for our children, but often
our good intentions produce less-than-desirable results. This is
the main reason that 70% of our youth leave their sport by the
time they reach high school, and tennis is no exception.
The vast experience Frank has gained working with athletes of
all abilities and with their parents has given him valuable insight
into specific and positive ways to address the challenges of
competition. Parents of successful athletes play a critical role
in their child’s development and in their ability to thrive under
pressure, both on and off the court.
“This extremely well-written book provides a tangible and
indispensable road map for all – the athlete, the parent, and the
coach. It feels good that information is presented in a positive
manner we can all take to heart without feeling we are being
talked down to. In fact, it is a “must-read!” Thank you, Frank
Giampaolo, for this incredible contribution!”
Dick Gould, Emeritus: Men’s Tennis Coach; Director of
Tennis Stanford University (1966-2018), California

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“Few coaches have Frank’s experience and expertise when it
comes to understanding the mental and emotional
components of high-performance tennis. More than just
technique and tactics, he delves deeper to develop a player’s
psychological capabilities. This book will be an indispensable
resource if you’re a parent or coach with an aspiring junior.”
Jon Levey, Editor Tennis Magazine, Tennis.com, Connecticut

“Success in junior tennis and beyond requires a 'Trust triangle'

between the player, parent, and coach. Each can maximize
their potential by understanding their role. People go through
all sorts of schooling and education to be prepared for any field
of endeavor. Unfortunately, parents are thrust into the
minefield-laden world of junior competitive tennis with less
education than even the simplest jobs.
Frank's new book provides a practical guide for the critical job
of tennis parenting. Good intentions don't cut it. This is
required reading for any parent serious about doing what is
best for their child and not adding to the current high drop-
out and burn-out rate statistics.”
Wayne Elderton, Tennis Director-North Vancouver Tennis
Centre, Tennis Canada Head Course Facilitator-British
Columbia

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In our ever-changing world, raising an exceptional athlete
seems to have more and more challenges. Frank paints a
beautiful roadmap that navigates the difficult relationships
between player, parent, and coach. He gives parents some
tremendous ideas on how they can best help their child reach
their potential. Frank has done a number of camps with our
high-performance juniors and their families, and we receive
nothing but rave reviews. I highly recommend this book for all
families with young athletes.
Bob Hochstadter, President USTA Southern California

“Frank is a big asset to the Southern California Tennis

Association in the world of player development and The
Psychology of Tennis. Our parents, players, and coaches are
lucky to have his knowledge, drive and passion front and
center. Those that work with his philosophy and
understanding of the game; instantaneously become better. I
have seen it over and over. There are very few coaches that
capture your attention and make the game easier to understand
at any level. I wish that I would have had him with me as I
pursued my dreams and aspirations. Simple and realistic
concepts that will help you, the parent/player, navigate the
game successfully. Take advantage of every opportunity you
get to hear Frank speak or read his material. You will get
better.”
Trevor Kronemann, Executive Director SCTA/USTA

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The Psychology of Tennis Parenting is amazing! Every parent
and coach need to read this book repeatedly and apply its
lessons with their children and their students. Kudos to Frank
for bringing his knowledge and wisdom to the world to help
parents and their most prized possessions, their children. I
highly recommend this book if you want to improve in all areas
of life.
Jeff Salzenstein, Former Top 100 ATP Singles and Doubles
Player, Stanford All-American, USTA High Performance
Coach, Performance Coach, And Speaker

“This is a must-read for every tennis parent. Frank cuts right

to the chase on navigating the tricky times ahead and creating
a game plan as a supportive parent. He not only gives real-
world examples but also backs them up with science. This will
be my go-to recommendation to anyone looking to step up
their role as a tennis parent.”
Danny Bryan, LSU Mens Head Coach, Louisiana

“For decades it has been abundantly clear that parents can play
either a very positive or even a very negative role in the
development of tennis playing juniors. Most fall in between but
ALL can improve but most need help. Frank has stepped to
the plate once again to assist. It is safe to say that any parent
who reads and applies even a small part of this book will
benefit for a lifetime."
Joe Dinoffer, President, On Court Off Court, Texas

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“As a coach, navigating the relationships between Coach,
Player and Parents are tricky at best. Everyone wants the best
result for the player, and The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
provides a clear road map. A must-read for serious parents and
coaches!”
Chuck Gill, USPTA President (Past), Florida

“A much-needed book about a very important subject. Frank

organized years of expertise and knowledge in a masterpiece
for any tennis parent”.
Cassiano Costa, Ph.D. Costa performance, Florida

Being a tennis parent was the most challenging job in my 50

years of tennis coaching and playing. We care so much for our
junior players that we often don't realize the consequences of
our love.
Frank has a unique perspective that can assist you in being the
best tennis parent you can be. In turn, your junior player will
get the best care, direction, and love from you - to be the best
they can be. This is a MUST-READ for every tennis parent!
Ken DeHart, PTR Hall of Fame/PTR International Master
Pro, 2 Time PTR International Pro of the Year/USPTA
Master Pro, USPTA Life Time Achievement Award Winner, 4
Time USPTA Divisional Pro of the Year, California

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“If your child loves tennis and is competing, do yourself a
favor and invest in Frank’s newest book, The Psychology of
Tennis Parenting. Frank walks you through the competitive
junior tennis minefield so that you and your child will enjoy the
process.”
Jorge Capestany, master coach, owner TennisDrillsTV,
Michigan

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FOREWORD

As a parent of a former high school and college student-athlete,

I know the importance of dealing with stress and anxiety. This
is especially true for parents who are navigating this journey
for the first time without any roadmap. This Psychology of
Tennis Parenting by Frank Giampaolo is a must-read for
student-athletes and their parents having to cope with the
pressures of taking their game to the next level.
Dan Santorum, PTR, President & CEO

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE 21
INTRODUCTION 23
CHAPTER 1: Nurturing Happiness 25
 Teach Happiness
 Happiness is a State of Being
 The Habit of Happiness
 Gratitude
 Heart-Based Parenting
 Praise Effort not Results

CHAPTER 2: Behind the Curtain 33

 The Multi-Sport Theory
 Successful Parental Habits
 Old School Parenting
 Emotional Regulation
 Mentors
 Teach Independence vs Dependence
 Chicken Blood
CHAPTER 3: Parental Dialog 43
 The Investment
 Parental Insecurities
 Post-Match Banter
 Always and Never
 Correct Conversations
 The Psychology of Listening
 Ask Don’t Tell

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CHAPTER 4: Stacking Momentum 55
 Preparation
 Stacking Momentum
 Executing Momentum
 Fueling Momentum
 Heart Rate Monitoring
 Training Blocks

CHAPTER 5: Mindset Matters 65

 Decisions Not Situations
 Substandard Loyalties
 Why We Choke
 Argumentative Athlete
 Practice Being Likeable
 Unplug to Reboot

CHAPTER 6: Thriving Versus Suffering 75

 The Suffering
 Intangibles
 Negative Character Traits
 Psychosomatic Dramas
 Parental Stressors
 Thriving vs Suffering
 Spotting Anomalies

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CHAPTER 7: Sabotaging Athletic Performance 89
 When Advice Creates Drama
 Suffering Defeat X 3
 Life Skills Through Tennis
 Knowledge Versus Wisdom
 Discomfort Is Good
 What If’s
 Visiting Their Peak Level

CHAPTER 8: Change Equals Improvement 99

 Avoidance versus Exposure
 Competitive Pressure Triggers
 Comfort Is Where Dreams Go To Die
 Changing Inner Belief
 Losing to Lesser Players
 Trimming the Fat
 The Pain of Changing

CHAPTER 9: Frustration Tolerance 109

 Understanding frustration
 Managing Frustration
 Desensitizing To Hardships
 Did You win?
 Perfectionism

CHAPTER 10 : Concentration and Focus 115

 Regulating Focus
 Overthinking Mechanics
 Limiting Distraction
 Time Traveling
 Living in the Present
 Relaxed Observation

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CHAPTER 11: Mental Fitness 123
 Cherish the Obsession
 Hey Jude
 Mental Fitness
 Monkey Mind
 Constructing Confidence
 Tennis on TV
CHAPTER 12: Match Day Concepts 133
 The Cause of Poor Play
 Assuming a Lack of Effort
 The Losers Draw
 Procrastination
 Cheaters
 Peaceful Warrior

CHAPTER 13: Self-Coaching 145

 Flipping Negative Inner Dialog
 Rock Paper Scissors
 Positive Inner Dialog
 Identifying Internal Obstacles
 Monitoring Outer Dialog
 Attention Seeking Negative Dialog
 Contaminating Thoughts

CHAPTER 14: Getting Good Vs. Earning Good 155

 Getting Good Versus Earning Good
 Replacement Thoughts
 Attention to Details
 Defeat Stimulates Growth
 Learn to Die
 Maximizing Progress
 Dealing with Adversity

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CHAPTER 15: Emotional Toughness 165
 The Emotional Questionnaire
 Where Attention Goes …Energy Flow
 Experience Matters
 Nurture the Warrior Mentality
 Teaching Emotional Health
 Performance Anxiety
 Red Flags

CHAPTER 16 : Staring Down Fear 175

 Self-Sabotage
 Handling Fear
 The Fault Finder
 Staring Down Fear
 Run Towards the Fire
 Operating Under Pressure

CHAPTER 17 : Anticipation 183

 Rudimentary Anticipation
 The Secret of Pattern Recognition
 Cognitive Ease
 Situational Observation
 Emotional Detachment
 Modern Intelligence

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CHAPTER 18: Anticipating Success 191
 Training Anticipation
 Set Them Up for Success
 Mental Rehearsals
 Parental Behavior
 Kobe’s Approach
 Six Anticipatory Skills

CHAPTER 19: Leadership 201

 Characteristics of Leaders
 Relationship Building
 Reality Check
 Get into their World
 Pattern Blocks
 Training Time

CONCLUSION 211

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PREFACE
The most important and neglected component of the
competitive tennis athlete is their mental and emotional
aptitude. Yet, year after year, most athletes and their parents
ignore the psychological aspects of the game of tennis. The
Tennis Parent’s Bible was my first attempt to call attention
to this issue. With great success and professional recognition,
the importance of mental and emotional development is finally
acknowledged, but a lack of implementation is still an issue
over a decade later.
Parents of high-performance athletes have a detailed job
description. While their job doesn’t typically involve the
development of the sports mechanics or athleticism, it does
comprise the mental and emotional aptitude needed to
navigate competitive pressures. I wrote The Psychology of
Tennis Parenting as a psychological guidance system to assist
parents with developing the software their athletes need to
maximize their full potential.
I am a Philomath, which is a lover of learning. For the past two
decades, I’ve traveled around the world coaching top athletes
and examining the role of parenting athletes, and identifying
ways to improve those systems. Though I have written many
books to help athletes, parents, and coaches fine-tune their
training routines, those athletes that have found the most
success have had a parent eager to direct the team.
Athletes need mental clarity at crunch time, and this book
provides the mental and emotional training pathways lacking
in most athletes’ development. A successful athlete on-court is
also an accomplished person off-court. Parents devoting time
and energy to developing strong mental and emotional skill
sets are raising confident and resilient future leaders.

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INTRODUCTION

It’s our job as parents and coaches to teach the science of

achievement and the art of fulfillment. The Psychology of
Tennis Parenting will help the reader uncover how to juggle
both topics. Your family’s happiness depends on your ability
to navigate the waters. As I’ve said a thousand times:
“Educated parents about the developmental process are the ship’s
motors…uneducated parents about the developmental process are the
ship’s anchors.”
If your athlete is already competing, you have seen that
winning titles requires more than just athletic ability. The
prerequisite is a healthy mental state: emotional fitness and
psychological strength matter. Our emotions determine our
course of action, and these pages assist you in shaping the
mental and emotional state of the athlete and their entourage
of coaches and trainers.
The Psychology of Tennis Parenting is a tool to assist the
parents and coaches in forming their athlete’s life skills and
positive character traits. Changing bad habits is the prelude to
winning higher-level matches. After all, winning and losing
doesn’t just happen. The quality of one’s preparation
determines success.
This book will teach parents how to educate their children to
advocate for themselves, be assertive under pressure, make
good decisions, and, most importantly, apply gratitude along
the journey.

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CHAPTER 1: Nurturing Happiness

“Winning isn’t the way to happiness …

Happiness is the way to winning.”

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Teach Happiness
At the heart of a tennis parent’s job description is to teach
happiness. Happier athletes are more likely to play longer,
develop deeper skill sets, perform more freely, become
successful tennis athletes, and become accomplished adults.
Neuroscientists report that just hearing another person laugh
triggers mirror neurons in the brain—these mirror neurons
insight laughter. Interestingly, to date, Harvard University’s
most popular class is a happiness course taught by Dr. Tal Ben-
Shahar.
Solution: Parental guidance greatly influences an athlete’s
success, especially through modeling - children do what you do
and not necessarily what you say. So, if you want to nurture
happier athletes, the first step is to show happiness. Focus on
the positive and avoid stressing the negative. Your happiness
or disappointment affects your athlete tremendously. Joy and
laughter are contagious, so laugh with your children daily.
There is a time and a place for correction, but be sure to lighten
the mood on tournament days and enjoy the journey.

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Happiness Is a State of Being
There is a misunderstanding amongst most junior athletes; they
tend to think happiness is a level of accomplishment. In
actuality, happiness is a state of being. Accomplished athletes
understand that happiness is not a constant, sustained state of
feeling great 24 hours a day.
Athletic happiness is a higher bar of athletic success, which
include the athlete’s highs and lows. Ironically, it is
uncomfortable for most people to feel great all the time. This
level of happiness is measured as happiness tolerance. People
can step outside those limits periodically but have trouble
staying within them for the long term. Most subconsciously
prefer the comfort of their old pessimistic mindset verse the
discomfort of changing towards a better optimistic approach.
Having to wait until one wins to feel happy is a disastrous habit.
For example, in a typical 64 draw weekend tennis event, half
the athletes lose every round and only 1 of 64 wins the
tournament. So, if you or your child are only happy with
perfect results, you’ll suffer needlessly, and that is no way to
thrive.
Solution: Remind your child (and yourself) that winning isn’t
the way to happiness; happiness is the way to winning.
Enjoying the process of improving weekly is the answer. As
the parent, take action and use tournament play as a learning
tool. Ask your child to list three skills they believe they
performed well and congratulate them. Then ask them to list
three skills they need to improve. Then go to work on tweaking
those improvements. Celebrate even the smallest successes
and enjoy the ride.

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The Habit of Happiness
The habit of happiness starts with gratitude and appreciation.
The top athletes I know nurtured these character traits from
an early age. In my experience, winners get excited about self-
development. Improving brings them more profound
happiness than winning another plastic tennis trophy. While
positive parenting skills play a big part, deciding to be happy
comes from the athlete.
Character traits like a positive attitude matter. Happiness is an
emotional choice. Attitude is an emotional choice. Please don’t
assume that the technical tennis coaches you hire to fix a serve
are responsible for teaching these skills.
Solution: Begin making happiness a habit each morning. A
gratitude journal listing three relationships, possessions,
behaviors, or opportunities is a great start. Ask your athlete to
complete this 5-minute task before breakfast. Parents will see
the value of rerouting the attitude of gratitude almost
instantaneously.
Continue happiness habits throughout the week by
surrounding your athlete with coaches who promote a positive
attitude and a happy demeanor. Yes, you can have a positive
role model that is also a solution-based technician. Working
hard and laughing their guts out should go hand in hand.

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Gratitude
Gratitude raises happiness when worked into an athlete’s daily
life. Psychologists believe that rehearsing gratitude helps rewire
how we think, feel, and process the world around us. Gratitude
helps us feel more positive emotions, improve our physical,
mental, and emotional health, deal with adversity, and build
stronger relationships.
Solution: Here’s the science: When we express gratitude, our
brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial
neurotransmitters responsible for our positive emotions.
So, ask your child to thank their body for allowing them to play
tennis and their coaches for teaching them technical, athletic,
emotional, and mental skills. And lastly, you, the parents, need
to thank your athletes for showing such dedication and
perseverance daily.

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Heart-Based Parenting
Getting into their word versus forcing them into yours is a
teaching technique that master teachers apply. They quickly
find the correct pathway into the athlete’s brain design. Kids
forced to grow outside their brain design grow for a while but
then wither away. Young athletes, like all people, have unique
personality profiles. Discover your athlete’s personality profile
unlocks their doors and opens their hearts.
Solution: It is important to remember that your athletes may
see the world differently and problem-solve differently. Please
surrender your ego and apply emotional aptitude. Teach from
the perspective of their learning design, such as, “This is my
opinion …I would love to hear yours. We need to find a solution. I’m
willing to listen.” You are opening the door to further
communication by respecting your child’s opinion.
One of the most challenging jobs of any athlete’s parents is to
avoid being a helicopter or tiger parent. Raise your children to
be self-sufficient, encourage them to communicate their
opinions, and discuss their options. I promise you that when
you switch from rule-based parenting (do it my way!) to heart-
based parenting (let’s figure this out together), they’ll improve
much faster, and your relationship with your athlete will
change for you the better. (For more information on
Personality profiling: The Soft Science of Tennis, Giampaolo)

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Praise Effort, Not Results
When parents say, “Ethan, if you win the whole event, we’ll buy you a
new computer game!”
The reality is that winning is out of Ethan’s control. An athlete
can influence winning a tournament but can’t control it. There
are far too many variables to manage in a match. Outcome
goals create an anxious environment and obstruct the learning
process. Parents should instead encourage process goals and
view each match as a learning experience. The research is very
consistent: praise effort, not results.
Solution: Replace this outcome bribe with an attainable goal,
“Ethan, if you hit your three performance goals each match this event, we’ll
buy you a new computer game.” Now Ethan is given a goal within
his control.
After the tournament, parents should avoid discussing the
laundry list of mistakes their athletes made during the match.
This negative list of faults destroys your athlete’s self-esteem
and confirms that they are broken and unworthy. Parents
should send their match notes to their athlete’s coach, and the
coach can address the issues during practice. Avoid a post-
match verbal attack.
Lastly, parents avoid using their friend’s success against them.
Praising their rival’s positive results compounds the pressure.
Praising your athlete’s effort instead keeps them focused on
the improvement process.
Return to TOC

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CHAPTER 2: Behind the Curtain

“Comfortable Spaces are Dangerous Places.”

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The Multi-Sport Theory
One would think that coming from a specialist that training
tennis as early as possible will get your athlete ahead of the
pack. The thinking is that more court time at an early age is
essential. Guess what? I don’t buy it. Specializing before age 13
is often detrimental to the athlete you’re trying to develop.
I’ve seen too many times how early specialization actually
stunts three aspects of your player’s growth. Please keep in
mind that exceptions shadow every rule, but those multi-sport
athletes often rise to the top.
Here are my top 3 reasons why you may want to choose multi
sports until your athlete’s early teens.
1) Overall Athleticism Increases
2) Higher Risk of Burnout
3) Higher Risk of Overuse Injuries

Solution: Promote “Free outside play. “Remember that? Kick

the can, tag, pick-up games, climb trees, exploring. Kids
organize their creative activities. They are exposed to new
games and are connected with accountability early on.
Athletes who enjoy playing different sports are introduced to
the unique skills of those sports that make for better all-around
athletes. Also, participating in multiple team sports will aid
teamwork, communication, and leadership skills.

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Successful Parental Habits
Tennis parents rarely get the spotlight, but without their
influence and leadership, most athletes wouldn’t even make
their local high school squad. I chatted with the parents of my
top nationally ranked juniors to find out what they had in
common. These parents teach their children ownership of their
tennis careers. Below are six commonalities found in the
parents of top competitors.
Solutions:
1) After each tennis lesson, these parents ask their
athletes to teach them the concepts they’ve just
learned. Learning by teaching solidifies their
knowledge, which improves confidence.
Communication skills enhance memorization.
2) For each private lesson their athlete takes, they
schedule a hitting session or a practice match utilizing
those improvements. Solidifying stroke adjustments
takes repetition. Memorizing new material in the form
of plays and patterns takes time.
3) Successful tennis parents have their athletes play sets
with paid college hitters. The parent hires the hitter and
instructs them to play the style their child has trouble
with in competition.
4) These parents ask them to rehearse their secondary
tools, and contingency game plans in group training
sessions. They know if their player doesn’t rehearse
their plan B, it likely won’t hold up under pressure.
5) If their child despises playing a retriever, they ask their
coaches to stop simply grooving to each other in
practice and develop the keep-away patterns used to
pull retrievers out of their game.

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6) Successful tennis parents replace some of the hours of
drilling with completing practice sets. Practicing in the
manner, they’re expected to perform requires a
different set of skills than most academy training.
Software management stems from being judged, and
that involves competition. Being a great competitor is
different from being a great stationary ball striker.

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Old School Parenting
Meet Deloris. Her son is crazy upset, but she is not. Her son
was cut from the high school squad. She didn’t blame shift. She
didn’t go marching into the school to yell at the coach. She
didn’t complain to the school’s athletic director. She didn’t
transfer her son to another school. She didn’t advise her son
to quit because this system isn’t fair.
Solution: Deloris told her son, Michael, “GET IN THE GYM
AND WORK HARDER!” Fast Forward, Michael Jordan is
the greatest basketball player of all time, with an estimated net
worth of $1.7 billion.

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Emotional Regulation
As Jenna Hanson’s match begins, her father, Steve, starts to
pace the cage. By the first game, he’s offering illegal advice to
Jenna “Jen, toss higher…come on!” Next, he’s offering “advice” to
the roaming official, “Ref, my daughter is being cheated on court #5
… let’s go, get out there!” After the referee stays for two games
and disappears, Steve begins yelling at Jenna’s opponent. “Do
you need to cheat?” In his hijacked state of mind, Steve is asked
to leave the facility once again.
We’ve all had firsthand experience witnessing our youngsters
get cheated. We’ve all lost perspective and momentarily felt like
Steve.
Regulating our emotions when our little babies compete isn’t
easy. Our self-worth and self-esteem are on the line as a silly
junior tennis match feels like the Super bowl. Powerful
protective instincts rise as we try desperately to react with just
the right amount of emotions not to upset our precious
phenom.
Solution: The very nature of tennis tournaments are mentally
and emotionally intense for children and their spectator
parents. A tennis match is a helpless experience for parents as
we sit and only smile when our child’s crying in anguish. Tennis
tournaments have rules and even roaming officials, but a few
bad calls inevitably occur in every match.
Emotional regulation is about controlling our reactions.
Staying calm under attack in a Zen-like fashion is a tennis
parent strategy. Fake it until you make it is an emotional
strategy. Managing one’s mindset, facial expression, and body
language is a vital tennis parent job description.

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Mentors
A tennis mentor is an experienced tennis parent with
specialized knowledge of the process. Great mentors are
motivational as well as informative. There are many roles of a
great mentor. They inspire, model positive behaviors,
encourage, grow your network, and help navigate your athlete’s
pathway.
Parents who have completed this journey are often eager to
help newbies navigate the wars.
Solution: So, find a mentor. Those parents who’ve done it
before successfully because their child’s rise to the top was due
to parental effort and strategies. Once you find a mentor, take
them out to dinner. Study their successes and failures. How did
they overcome their challenges? Be careful not to use them
simply to vent your feelings after losses to get the anger off
your chest.
“It takes a village” is a common statement in our world. Raising
a high-performance athlete doesn’t happen without the help of
others, so don’t be afraid to ask.

39
Teach Independence Versus Dependence
Frustrated parents try to do everything for their athletes, yet
the athlete can’t seem to win. Many parents are torn between
wanting to raise responsible adults and wanting their children
to need them forever. Strong, independent problem solvers are
essential in competitive tennis and life. After all, our young
tennis athletes are future adults in the making. The problem
lies in the fact, that all too often, parents are doing everything
for their athletes. While you feel you are helping, you are
hurting your child’s development.
Solution: Teach independence vs. dependency. If you’ve
created a dependency, it’s time to slowly back off. Problem-
solving is a learned behavior. Start challenging them by:
 Give them weekly chores with allowances. By
integrating responsibility, you’ll help them with time
management, commitment, and goal-setting.
 Help them save their own money and spend it wisely.
 Ask them to get ready for school, practice, and game
day themselves. This task teaches them life skills like
organization and responsibility.
 Teach them that independent athletes can do some
training tasks alone. Showing them trust teaches the
mindset you seek.
 Give them navigational responsibility. Relinquish the
leadership role and ask them to lead the way to your
destinations. Trusting them develops the confidence
required to be an independent problem solver.

Athletes that calmly problem-solve in competition are

nurtured differently than athletes who wilt come match day.

40
Chicken Blood
Do you schedule your eight-year-old athlete’s days without 15
minutes of free time? How about scouring online forums for
the most exclusive violin master, mathematical tutors, and best
tennis coaches? Does your child attend the best private schools
to ensure an Ivy League education? If so, you may be known
as an obsessive parent.
If you’re a bit consumed, not to worry. In China, in the 1950s,
children were injected with fresh chicken blood to stimulate
energy. This hyper-competitive environment raises concerns
about the emotional well-being of the athletes. As we’ve said,
the dropout rate in tennis is approximately 70% in the early
teens. The most common reason given is crazy parents.
If you’re not sure if you are an unhealthy tennis parent hurting
more than helping, read on:
Solution: Here are a few tell-tale signs that you are a helicopter
or tiger parent and likely need to back off a bit.
 You spy on your athlete during their academy practice.
You send text messages reminding them to “Bend their
knees.” You don’t allow them to get ice cream with
friends after practice because they’ll be late for the
tutor.
 You secretly return to the eighth grade and do their
school work, so they have more time to develop their
slice backhand. You think you’re saving them from
drowning, but you’re actually holding them down.
 You are a maid, not a parent. After practice, you unload
the car, put away their tennis gear, pick up their dirty
clothes in their room, and then retrieve their old drinks
and dishes throughout the house.

41
  You fight their battles. As your athlete is getting
“hooked” out of the match, you sprint to the
tournament desk screaming and demanding a lines
person stat! After a minor battle between your athlete
and a bully at school, you call and vent to the principal.
 You coach their coaches. You sit alongside the tennis
court during your child’s private lesson and shout out
observations to the coach. Before the lesson, you grab
the coach’s ear and tell them the twelve things your
athlete is still doing incorrectly in matches. After the
lesson, you corner the coach for an additional 25 min.,
teaching them everything you know about the game.

Let your athlete be responsible for making decisions. Letting

them fail a bit allows them to learn from their mistakes.
Tackling their problems is how they grow. Learning problem-
solving skills will assist them in winning competitive matches.
Let them lead, allow them to make decisions, and encourage
better choices the next time they fail. By allowing your athlete
to deal with conflict and cope with defeat, you’re secretly
developing their life skills, positive character traits, and the
moral compass every young person needs to succeed.
Return to TOC

42
CHAPTER 3 Chapter: Parental Dialog

“Get into their world instead of forcing

them into yours.”

43
The Investment
Andy: “My kids are getting interested in tennis. Why was your
daughter so into it?” Did she win all the time?”
Frank: “While she was top in the National rankings and played the
US Open by 15, she lost most weeks.”
Andy: “So, why did you keep her in it?”
Frank: “To help me teach a moral compass, positive character, and life
skills.”
Andy: “I hear tennis is an expensive sport?”
Frank: “Chasing greatness in anything comes with a high price. Being
mediocre is easy.”
Andy: “So what did you and your athlete get out of it?”
Solution: Parents, you’re not paying for tennis. Let’s be clear;
tennis is just a vehicle. You’re paying for opportunities to help
you develop life skills. The investment is in their physical,
mental, and emotional hyper-growth. These attributes
developed through tennis are what college coaches and later
employers seek. Participation in sports covertly helps develop
world-class leaders. You are spending money placing your
athlete into challenging situations, such as when they want to
quit but persist. When they don’t want to go to practice at 6:30
am, but they do. When they’re “too scared” to battle but they
learn to fight on and preserver.
Parents investing in raising an elite tennis player are also
investing in superior life skills, such as:
 Building the discipline required to develop the physical,
mental, and emotional skills necessary to be
abnormally great.
 Gaining the learned experience of personal goal
setting, resiliency, and dedication to a craft.
 Learning good sportsmanship- to be humble when
dealing with victories and be classy in defeat.

44
  Instilling a strong work ethic through years and years
of hard work on and off the court.

Accomplished athletes will have more success and life

experiences in their teens than some people achieve in their
entire lives. Developing a world-class person is difficult at best
and doesn’t happen overnight, but what is the alternative?
Your child can be on the tennis court or sitting on the couch
in front of two screens thumbing through social media on their
phone, eating cheese puffs while playing the latest video game
on their computer.

45
Parental Insecurities
“Stephen, I’m sorry I yelled at you after your match this morning. I truly
regret the hurt I caused. I love watching you perform. I was overwhelmed,
and it was my fault. I take full responsibility. I apologize. Love you.”
We’ve all been involved in post-match drama. It’s common for
parents to “lose it” after our athlete gifts away matches. Our
disappointment, frayed nerves, and temporary insanity are
caused by fear. The fear is that we are inadequate. You need to
know that it’s a typical automatic response triggered whenever
we feel threatened. Our insecurities and anger after our child
falls short of victory have everything to do with how vulnerable
we feel sitting, watching our child going down in flames, and
not being able to do anything about it.
Solution: Admitting that we may be wrong is painful. After a
difficult loss, accepting responsibility requires acknowledging
that we regret our behavior. We should be apologetic for our
actions and show remorse and respect by changing our poor
behavior and requesting forgiveness. Great tennis parents
remove the stigma of apologizing. Making amends teaches
vulnerability. By doing so, you’re teaching a great life skill. If a
parent is too stubborn to apologize, guess what they are
teaching their children?

46
Post-Match Banter
Remember that every use of force, even the smallest, creates a
counterforce. Like Newton’s third law, “For every action… there’s
an equal opposite reaction.” Parents’ match play observations
delivered to an athlete right after the competition create a love
of competition or distaste for competition. Here’s an insightful
question for us adults: What if our boss gave us their list of
everything we did wrong at the end of every day? I know I’d
be looking for a new job ASAP!
Solution:
 Spend a week practicing not giving unsolicited advice
to your young athlete.
 Stop yourself and choose silence.
 Give your child the time to organize their solutions.

Here’s a fact, your words become your child’s inner dialog at

future crunch time. So, if your post-performance banter is
repeatedly heard as “you’re not good enough,” guess what
they’re thinking as they’re trying desperately to close out
another match?
Parents unknowingly destroy the inner belief needed by their
junior athletes. Analyzing performance is terrific for those
detailed data collectors, but please follow up the analysis by
texting your findings to the coach instead of sharing them with
your child. Post-match, your child only needs to hear one
question from you: What kind of ice cream are you getting
today? All they need to feel from you is how much you love to
watch them play and how proud you are of them.

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Always & Never
“Always” and “Never” statements are frequently used by
parents to emphasize their points of view. While using “you
always” and “you never” as opening statements, they convey
emotional intent, but they also tell a lie. While parents know
the “always and never” phrases aren’t meant to be literal, their
youngsters may not see it that way. The exaggerations open a
floodgate of negative emotions among young athletes. I
recommend exchanging “always and never” for statements
easier for your young athlete to digest.
Solution: If you must share your insight, start your review with
“This is just an observation… not a condemnation. I want to share what
I thought I observed, and you tell me if I’m off base or not. Ok, by you?
Or, “Here is something to consider ….”
Avoid using the “always or never” opening assertions to prove
your point. In the coaching world, as in life, there are
exceptions that shadow every rule, and a defensive athlete will
try and find the exception to prove their point. These
inaccurate statements typically ruin the true message of what
you are conveying. Arguments ensue as your youngster tries to
prove you wrong, or worse, they shut down.
Replace the “always and never” statements with questions to
open a dialog. Your athlete will then be motivated to apply
their own solution-based problem-solving.

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Correct Conversations
Parents want to help and should be a part of their athlete’s
team. That is, if they are not creating pressure. Do you know
if you are unintentionally adding stress? Conversations should
be based on the performance needed, not the outcome.
It’s the parental role to create accountable young adults- a
common theme throughout this book. Your young athletes are
best served by attempting to solve their own problems. We
want to nurture them to apply solution-based dialog to increase
confidence and resiliency. Please keep in mind that parents and
coaches are often “planting seeds.” These mental and
emotional skills often need years to develop.
Here are some match day correct conversations for your
“Weekend Coaches.”
Solution:
1) Warm Up Correctly. Come tournament day; your
player should be mentally, emotionally, and physically
ready for peak performance. The match day starts with
a well-planned physical warm-up session. This includes
warming up general athleticism and their tool belt of
strokes. I also recommend warming up hitting offense,
neutral, and defensive situations on the move. After
nutrition and pre-hydration needs are met, mental and
emotional visualization of preset plays and protocols
are warmed up before they step into the club.

2) Gifting Away Matches. A great question: Am I

losing, or is the opponent beating me? If your athlete
makes things easy for their opponent through
unforced errors, they are losing. If their opponent is
outplaying them, they’re getting beat, and there’s a big
difference. Often winning in junior tennis is error

49
 reduction. It’s your athlete’s job never to become the
most valuable player for the other team!

3) Today’s Elements. Explain why they should adapt to

the elements. Smart players avoid complaining about
the court, the sun, the wind, the ball, or other elements
they cannot control.
Here is a typical conversation regarding the elements.
Your junior is in a clay court tennis event, and it just
rained. Discuss how the clay court is going to play very
differently. The ball is going to be heavier. They may
want to adapt by using the lowest tension racket in
their bag. They adjust their game accordingly by simply
viewing the conditions as part of the game that day.
Ask your athlete before matches to identify possible
element issues and to be prepared to plug in the correct
solutions.

4) Paying Attention. Ask your mature athletes to pay

attention to the opponent’s tendencies by spotting
their top patterns - opponent situational awareness.
Mentally tough competitors are allowed to be surprised
by an opponent’s shot option once or twice, but after
a few times, the shot is their tendency and not a
“surprise” but a lack of match awareness. For example:
If the opponent is killing them with a drop shot to lob
pattern, and your athlete doesn’t know to drop shot a
drop shot, then how to combat common patterns
should be in your athlete’s coach’s future
developmental plan. Ask your athlete to spot key
serving patterns, returning patterns, rally patterns, and
favorite short ball options. Just as it takes years to
develop strokes, it takes years to be a mentally tough
competitor.

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5) Self-Coaching. Discuss how to adjust to mistakes
with proactive solution-based dialog. If they complain
“out loud” about the problem, ask them to “flip it” and
talk about their solution. Be careful about your
“weekend coaching.” Athletes who broadcast their
issues during play are usually parroting a parent or
coach that begins every sentence with “The problem is
…” An athlete’s self-coaching is often a mirror of the
parent’s and coach’s past dialog.

6) Change. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing

but expecting a different result. Discuss how and when
to change a losing strategy. Here are two very different
changes. Knowing when to activate each one will help
win matches. If your athlete is running great patterns,
controlling the court but not executing the last shot, I
recommend sticking with the strategic plan but
applying better margins. If they are playing well but still
find themselves on the losing end, it is time for a
different strategy- their second contingency game plan.
At least two styles of well-rehearsed game plans (Plan
A and B) should be available for each match.

7) Letting Go of the Outcome. Ask them to focus on

winning the performance battle, and the outcome will
take care of itself. This principle focal point is essential
for parents as well. Let go of USTA rankings, UTR
rating numbers, and tournament seedlings. The
consistent chatter about who’s ranked where pulls your
athlete into the outcome frame of mind, sabotaging the
quiet performance-based goals you seek.

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The Psychology of Listening
For a youngster to mentally process your message, the athlete
must pay attention to the essence of the ideas. Most children
never get past their parent’s tone of voice and nonverbal clues.
Digesting the message isn’t easy for most junior athletes. Once
the message is perceived as negative, they stop listening. So use
a bit of reverse psychology and apply optimistic solutions
instead of the laundry list of their problems. This method
detaches the athlete from their ego.
Young athletes are typically lost in their judgmental thoughts,
so the listener often distorts the message.
“One who understands what to say has knowledge; one who understands
when to say it has wisdom.”
Magnifying the negative and forgetting the positive is a typical
communication obstruction. Every athlete, parent, and coach
have a unique communication style. There are four basic
communication styles (passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive,
and dominating). It’s important to understand that if your style
isn’t working, change your communication system to fit your
listener.
Solution: Understand your communication system. Try to
downgrade your tone of voice to a calm, relaxed cadence to get
your meaning heard. When choosing to discuss their failures,
switch the problems with the solutions. Add player
accountability to problem-solving using the “Ask, don’t tell.”
teaching method. After all, top athletes are nurtured to solve
their problems.
Try to focus on giving without expecting, argue less, stop
comparing your child with their peers, avoid participating in
gossip, eliminate judgment, and choose not to live vicariously
through your child.

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Ask Don’t Tell
When outside forces affect your athlete’s mindset, it’s called
extrinsic motivation. This extrinsic motivation applied by
parents is often a reward or punishment. These “rewards or
punishment” methods are only temporary. The only lasting
force is self-motivation, called intrinsic motivation.
Coaches and parents encouraging intrinsic motivation better
connect with kids with the “Ask … don’t tell” method of
communication. They purposely give them many opportunities
to participate in their own decisions: breeding accountability
and ownership.
Solution: Athletes need to feel like their choices matter.
Parents can teach intrinsic motivation by building a
relationship of trust and respect. Avoid micromanaging
because it develops dependency and top athletes are
independent thinkers and doers.
Please ensure you motivate your athletes by praising their
leadership and letting them know their organizational work is
making a difference. Offering autonomy, a mastery blueprint,
and purpose stimulates athletes to take ownership of their
career and life path.

Return to TOC

53
54
CHAPTER 4: Stacking Momentum

“Getting Good Versus Earning Good.”

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Preparation
“Katie, if you win today, your UTR will go up into the 8’s…Your college
scholarship at UCLA is on the line, so pay attention and don’t blow it!
Oh, and she’s a pusher. She gets everything back, so stay focused!”
Confidence doesn’t stem from these pep talks. They only
increase the terror in your athlete. True confidence stems from
your athlete believing that they’ve adequately prepared for the
event.
Junior athletes don’t miraculously rise to the occasion. They
sink to the level of their training- a phrase repeat throughout
this book.
Solution: Prepare the mind, body, and spirit for battle. It’s no
secret that juniors and their parents want the win. It’s their will
to prepare properly that is often lacking. Advanced
competitors embrace the discipline of development long
before the consistent winning begins. Intermediates all too
often see development as punishment. Nurture your athlete to
work harder and smarter than they did yesterday.
Intelligent preparation is the key to unlocking their match
potential. The champion is born when the willingness to
outlearn and outwork their rivals supersede their need for
approval. Physical, mental, and emotional preparation will get
them better results, but preparation is its reward at the end of
the day. Fulfillment comes from persevering through the hard
work.

56
Stacking Momentum
Congratulations if your athlete is in a cycle of growth. If so,
how do we assist them in stacking that momentum? Can you
and your athlete identify an incline or decline in activity?
Momentum is the ongoing upward movement top athletes
achieve.
Here’s how to assist your athlete in controlling their learning
curve.
Solution: Ask them to create a nightly journal. Please
encourage them to write in it five nights a week. The plan is to
document the progressions they’ve accomplished each day in
all four major components. Anticipate your athlete improving
on two topics per component every week.
Hardware
 Strokes
 Athleticism
Software
 Mental
 Emotional

Remind your athlete please don’t confuse the quantity of

hitting with the quality of progressions. Their ongoing mission
is to attend weekly training with a customized developmental
plan. Categorize the quality of the development each day. Was
today a wasted day, a good day, or a great day for developing
their skills? Stack great days. Challenge your youngster to
organize great days for the entire week. Then, repeat.

57
Executing Momentum
In high-performance tennis, understanding psychological
momentum plays a key role in closing out matches.
Momentum is a bi-directional concept affecting either the
probability of winning or losing. Gaining then keeping positive
momentum (where almost everything seems to go right) and
stopping then reversing negative momentum (where nearly
everything seems to go wrong) are skills worth educating.
Maintaining psychological momentum keeps your athlete’s
confidence high and helps them play at their peak performance
level longer.
Unfortunately, manipulating the momentum is difficult to do.
Often your athlete experiences a momentary lack of focus or a
setback due to the opponent’s intelligent tactical changes. After
momentum is lost, teaching them how to recapture it is part of
the software package and will most likely have to be the
parent’s job.
Following, you’ll discover steps to finding momentum when
it’s lost.
Solution: Educate your athlete that recapturing the elusive skill
when lost starts with a time-out. Typically, your athlete’s
positive momentum is nowhere to be found when they lose
three games in a row. This lack of focus signals it is time to
take a legal bathroom break or trainer break. Hitting the pause
button extinguishes the opponent’s fire and changes the
game’s flow as their winning rhythms are interrupted. Teach
your athlete to utilize legal time-outs to control the momentum
of their matches.
So, what influencers stop your athletes from building
momentum and giving that precious commodity over to their
opponents?

58
  Negative Body Language and the State of Mind
 Being Judgmental About Mistakes
 Wandering Mind Which Causes Unforced Errors
 Choosing to be Combative
 Match Awareness Mistakes

What should your athletes do to hold on to the hot

commodity called momentum?
 Apply Bold Body Language
 Focus On Their Script of Top Plays
 Maintain Intensity
 Physical (Heart Rate Management)
 Verbal Self Encouragement

Building positive momentum should be of utmost importance

in match play. Unfortunately, match play momentum
fluctuates throughout the match. Your athlete’s job is to keep
that energy flowing in the right direction for as long as possible.

59
Fueling Momentum
Athletes who suffer from low energy cycles on tournament day
may need to reevaluate the management of their energy
sources. The three primary sources are oxygen, nutrition, and
hydration.
Regarding oxygen intake, mindfulness techniques like deep
breathing should be used between points. Supplying oxygen to
the muscles, lungs, and brain is critical for an athlete looking
to play at their peak performance level for the duration of a
match.
Concerning nutrition, it’s not just what they eat but when they
eat that helps to prime the muscles and brain. Concerning
hydration, pre-hydration, match time, and post-hydration all
play a key role in maintaining energy in competition— just one
percent of dehydration affects cognitive brain function.
Solution: Junior athletes should begin to take fueling their
bodies very seriously. Oxygen is used to break down glucose
which creates fuel for their muscles. During prolonged exercise
like a competitive tennis match, carbohydrates are the primary
fuel source, providing most of their energy. Hydration in
competition also increases energy, improves recovery,
regulates body temperature, and aids mental clarity.
All three fuels can help improve physical performance during
competitive play.

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Heart Rate Monitoring
High performance is now high-tech. Monitoring fitness,
fatigue, and performance are crucial. Under match time
pressure, an athlete’s individual peak performance abilities rely
on performing in their prime heart rate zone. Your athlete’s
response to competitive stressors depends on optimizing point
play and recovery phases.
Every athlete has a unique heart rate profile and oxygen
consumption due to age, body size, gender, fitness, and
genetics. Dehydration, inactivity, and stress also affect an
athlete’s profile. Without getting too technical, your athlete
can control their intensity of effort, strain, discomfort, and
fatigue by paying attention to their heart rate. Learning to
monitor heart rate will significantly improve an athlete’s
hardware and software components.
Of course, customization is key, but I have found that if your
junior athlete’s heart rate is under 115 bpm, they’re likely to
perform with too low of intensity. You’ll witness them not
moving their feet, slower swing speeds, and appearing
disconnected to the here and now. Above 145 bpm, and they
are likely to perform with too high of an intensity. Athletes
then often appear to be careless and reckless. Their breathing
is fast and shallow, and they seem to be in panic mode.
Occasionally some athletes in panic mode choose to push.
Inside the 115 bpm -145 bpm range is where sweet peak
performance lives- “In the Zone,” calm and relaxed play is
found.
Solution: Monitoring their heart rate provides a way to gauge
intensity and stress (both psychological and physiological)
occurring during high-performance training and match play.
Real-time feedback allows your athlete to measure the intensity
of their training and to adjust for better results. I like that
numbers don’t lie when monitoring their heart rate.
61
Keep in mind that the Apple-Watch isn’t allowed in
tournament play, so I recommend picking up an inexpensive
Fitbit. Tracking their heart rate helps maintain the peak
performance every adult seeks.

62
Training Blocks
“Practice in the manner you’re expected to perform” is an old Vic
Braden Tennis College (VBTC) mantra. Consider applying the
below information to your child’s training regimen.
The duration of a tough tennis match often reaches the 2-hour
mark. Often juniors have to compete twice daily in
tournaments, so “Practice in the manner you’re expected to perform.”
Meaning: They would be wise to train twice a day in 2-hour
training blocks.
Approximately 75% of match time is between-points or during
change-overs. This time demands critical problem-solving
skills (software) to take center stage. So, “Practice in the manner
in which you’re expected to perform.” Meaning: Spend a good part
of your athletes’ training on the strategic mental and emotional
aptitude components.
Junior tennis matches are a series of quick intermittent “mini”
performances- alternating approximately 7 seconds of extreme
agility with about 15 seconds of recovery. This play-recovery
cycle is broken by periods of 90 seconds during the change-
overs. So “Practice in the manner you’re expected to perform.”
Meaning: Pre-plan strategic software skills (rituals) to
implement between points and during change-overs. At this
time in the match, hardware skills (strokes and athleticism) are
not on stage.
On the practice court, replace the stationary grooving with
match time simulations. High-performance athletes need quick
agility because they average four directional changes in a single
point. So, “Practice in the manner in which you’re expected to perform.”
Meaning: Apply anaerobic training combining cognitive
processing speed with footwork exercises.

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A high-performance tennis player runs approximately 30 ft. (8
m) per point, and a match averages 130 points. So “Practice in
the manner you’re expected to perform.” Meaning: Apply aerobics
training to simulate about 260 points in the two matches a day
tournament cycle.
High-performance players average 2.5 strokes per rally.
Approximately 70% of the points only last up to 4 hits, 20%
last 5-9 hits, and only 10% last ten or more hits. So “Practice in
the manner in which you’re expected to perform.” Meaning: Shift from
playing catch (hitting back and forth to each other) to a violent
game of keep-away (pattern development and repetition.)
Solution: Training should simulate match cycles of intensity.
The style of play (offensive versus defensive) greatly influences
the customized demands of your athlete’s training.
Personality dictates behavior, so I highly recommend taking a
free MBTI assessment online to understand why your athlete
thinks as they do, acts like they act, and says what they say.
When it comes down to customization of their training,
personality profiles matter most.
In practice, your athlete should mimic the psychological and
physiological stress of actual tennis matches. Your athlete will
maximize their potential much quicker when their training
simulates the specific demands of match play.
Return to TOC

64
CHAPTER 5: Mindset Matters

“Every decision either pushes them closer to

their goals or pulls them away
from those goals.”

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Decisions Not Situations
Mark is a very athletic junior from Florida. He has a wicked
serve and a pre-stretch, compact forehand reminiscent of
Agassi, but he performed poorly in matches. Through video
analysis, I determined it was clear that Mark's match decisions
were the cause of his match failures. Here's what I found
charting his match.
Mark's mechanics were reasonably solid, but his reckless shot
selection caused the lion's share of his unforced errors. Mark
won 68% of the points that he played inside the court.
Unfortunately, he played most of the match from 10 feet
behind the baseline. From the backcourt, Mark won 36% of
those points. His chosen court position wasn't exposing his
strengths.
In the first set, Mark allowed fear to control his mind during
mega points, abandoning his strengths and pushing to be
careful. He choked after building a comfortable lead due to his
lapses in concentration. After dropping the lead in set one and
losing the set, Mark started set two in a destructive mindset,
racing through points. His self-doubt and negative self-talk
were on full display. While he occasionally played brilliant pro-
level tennis, his lack of mental and emotional training was
running rapid.
Mark's hardware skills were good, but his software skills
needed development. His decision-making skills applied
between-point and during changeover routines were non-
existent. Every choice an athlete makes will either push him
toward their goals or pull them away from them. These choices
are part of the athlete's software components.
Solution: The best way for Mark to improve his results is to
shift his focus to new software development. Strategically
Mark would be wise to use his strengths more often, especially

66
on big points. Mark hit approximately 50% forehands and 50%
backhands. A 75%/25% ratio would be beneficial. Also, from
the tactical side, Mark should be attempting 70% of his first
serves with his huge kick serve instead of the flat bomb that
rarely hits its mark. Emotionally, between points, Mark needs
to keep unwanted, contaminating thoughts out of his mind by
keeping his mind filled with his performance patterns of play.
Mark's outcome wants trumped his performance needs, as seen
in his lack of routines and rituals.
For Mark, I recommended that he fill his mind with solutions
rather than a laundry list of problems. Being solution-oriented
is the mindset that matters in competition.

67
Substandard Loyalties
During match reviews, intelligent athletes understand that they
should hear all perspectives of a learning opportunity without
letting bias or immature emotions get in the way. It’s our job
as parents and coaches to remind our athletes, wise people
listens more than they talk and evaluate before they act.
Immature athletes are often loyal to a skill or process because
that’s how they’ve always done it. This belief is an example of
a fixed mindset- they are unwilling to grow because they think
they already know everything there is to know. Sound familiar?
A growth mindset is eager to learn, grow, and improve. Can
you think of examples when you or your athlete stubbornly
hold on to substandard loyalties? These could be
untrustworthy mechanics, subpar fitness routines, or a lack of
strategy to pull retrievers out of their game. Listing, organizing,
and then improving will be a mainstay in an athlete’s life until
they hang up their rackets and hopefully retire from the game
at age 90.
Solution: Athletes must believe that effort and persistence can
improve athletic skills and intelligence. Athletes with a growth
mindset embrace change and the challenges ahead. They
understand that there are many levels of this sport, and as they
improve, they enter a higher level of competition, and new
challenges will arise. Open-minded individuals learn from
constructive criticism after competition and seek growth above
outcomes.

68
Why We Choke
The key to your athlete’s next level of success lies in controlling
the ego. Their ego plays a big part in what they choose to apply
under pressure. Winning often occurs when the athlete selects
to stay on script in matches. Being on script means applying
their developed strokes, patterns, and court positions in
matches. It’s not just what they’ve learned; it’s what they
choose to apply under pressure.
It’s common coaching vernacular to say winning stems from
their choices and ability to play to win versus playing not to
lose. When athletes play to win, they’re in the positive “flow
state” of mind we seek. Athletes who play not to lose typically
play with a fear-based, ego-driven outcome mindset.
Solution: Let’s consider why the ego is mostly to blame for
choking.
The ego is what causes the competitors to collapse in some
matches. The ego is responsible for thinking ahead to future
thoughts and drifting away from the current situation. Such as
“What are my friends, family, or coaches say when I win this tournament.”
“Where’s that huge trophy going to go in my room?” “My UTR should
go up to a 9.0 when I win this!” In this outcome state of mind, the
ego pulls them away from the performance mindset we all seek,
and disaster strikes.
Let’s go a bit deeper into choking. What causes your great
athletes to shift from a winning system to a losing system? The
cognitive shift from wondering into the “what if I win”
mindset distracts focus and causes poor execution. Then the
ego promotes the fear-based “what if I lose” thoughts which
cause the athlete’s brain to be hijacked into worrying about an
undesirable outcome.

69
It’s important to note that when athletes are scared before a
big match, it’s not the fear of playing in that match; it’s the fear
of possibly losing and the repercussions of the loss. You see,
the fear of flying is actually the fear of crashing.

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The Argumentative Athlete
For most teens, argumentativeness is more a reflex than an
angry choice. Typically, high-performance athletes believe their
knowledge of their sport exceeds their parent’s knowledge.
Hence, giving them a perceived advantage over their parents.
Turning damaging arguments into healthy disagreements is an
emotional strategy. The lesson learned is that everyone can get
their concerns heard and considered. Parents can find these
arguments puzzling. You’ll help athletes regulate their
emotions and solve problems by teaching them how to
respond better.
Solution: Nurture the ability to postpone and censor their
responses to advice. This key self-awareness trait will serve
your athletes well on and off the tennis courts. Here are some
tricks to get them started:
 Digest the substance of the request.
 Recognize when emotions are running the show.
 Take a break.
 Avoid criticizing before responding.
 Set the ego aside and choose your battles.
 Formulate evidence before stating your case.
 Offer solutions versus pointing out flaws.
 Disallow the blame game.
 Confront the subverting of the conversation.

Remember, even though your athlete’s tennis skills are mature,

their emotional regulating skills are likely still under
development.

71
Practice Being Likeable
Learning to control one’s emotions and respect others is an
essential social skill, despite one’s personality profile. Being
polite and engaging with those around your athlete is
emotional aptitude. While parents sometimes get caught up
with SAT scores and an Ivy League education, I’d like to
remind parents that emotional intelligence is just as important
as your child’s intelligence quota (IQ). Teaching them to be
“likable” is within the parent’s job description.
Solution: Here are a few tips to assist your athlete in becoming
a more likable human being:
Say thank you, and flash your biggest and most sincere smile at
tournament umpires after each match. Thank the tournament
desk before leaving the site. Shoot a quick email to the USTA,
UTR, or ITF organizers. The more “love” your athlete can give
out, the more it builds inside them, and the more they’ll get
back.
Give sincere praise to strangers around the tournament site.
Cheer for friends and compliment strangers. Be the individual
who lights up the room. Be the first to make others smile.
Laugh, and develop those extrovert muscles. The seriousness
of competition has enough grey anxiety, so bring a bit of
happiness to the experience. Sometimes we take ourselves and
this game entirely too seriously. Science says when you laugh,
it produces endorphins, known as “happy” brain chemicals.
They soothe stress and reduce anxiety. Laughing and smiling
help you enjoy the moment. On-court, grateful, appreciative
players are less tense, nervous, and fearful. Here’s something
to remember: Happiness comes before winning!

72
Unplug to Reboot
Schedule time to recharge the family’s batteries. Book time
away from competition to live a more normal life for a bit.
Chasing points is living life at top speed. Ask your athletes to
replace chasing points with chasing peace. With a peaceful
mind comes silence, and new improvement methods will
appear. So, pursue quiet time to relieve stress and plan for a
better tomorrow.
Solution: Here are a few tips to help your athlete become a
more centered human being:
Reclaim their spirit by asking them to be present in the now.
Replace dwelling on tennis and practice with just living.
Disconnect from tennis for a little while. Take time to
appreciate an old hobby. Reminisce with an old friend and
decompress from the stress of battle. Trade in tennis clothes
for an old favorite pair of jeans. Shut off the phone, get out of
the sun and crank up the AC. Be still and learn to relax. The
mind, body, and spirit need time to heal.
Walking in nature, hitting the beach, or hiking trails is a great
way to cross-train and clear your mind. Enjoy recharging.
Quiet rest is an integral part of the growth cycle. It’s not
healthy to be plugged into tennis 24/7. Real life happens
outside the tennis fence, so unplug and enjoy some time away.
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73
74
6 CHAPTER: Thriving Versus Suffering

“Don’t be upset by the results you didn’t get

with the work you didn’t do.”

75
The Suffering
Izzy is a tall, quintessential California girl. When she walks into
a club, heads turn, looking like the real deal. At age 16, she
appears to be a WTA superstar in the making. Her father is
sure that she’ll be on tour soon. Her coaches shake their heads
because she looks like she could be world-class, but they know,
at this rate, she won’t.
Unfortunately, with her current mindset, she’s spiraling
downward. You see, she wants the rankings without the hard
work. The rewards and not the struggle. The prestige, not the
process. Izzy’s in love with the fan fair, not the fight. To Izzy,
suffering is felt as a personal defeat. Having to work hard is
something naturally gifted athletes don’t have to do. Sadly,
triumph doesn’t work that way.
Solution: Izzy will have a shot at greatness if she buys into
hard work and discipline. A less physically gifted athlete with a
better work ethic will outperform a more physically talented
athlete with a weaker work ethic. For all athletes, including the
physically gifted, properly handling the pain of training
determines success. Who you are is defined by how hard you
are willing to work.

76
Intangibles
In our world, intangibles are software skills directly related to
the character traits of a future college team member. Character
traits are the core values and moral qualities present in an
individual. Please remember that parents of college-bound
athletes have very important jobs. One is the education of the
below positive character traits.
“Sports don’t teach the below skills…they expose them.”
The leaders in high-performance tennis have nurtured these
skills. These intangibles are educated by choice and not left to
chance.
Solution: Plan on taking time daily to educate your child
about the below topics:
1) Grit: Courage and resolve; strength of character
2) Motivation: The reason or reasons for attaining your
goals.
3) Trustworthiness: The ability to be relied on as honest
or truthful.
4) Gratitude: The appreciation of actions and benefits
bestowed upon you.
5) Accountability: The condition of being responsible
for your actions.
6) Commitment: The position of being dedicated to
your cause.
7) Respectfulness: A curious regard for others’ feelings
or situations.
8) Integrity: Having a solid moral compass and
principles
9) Honesty: Acting with fairness and righteous conduct.
10) Effort: The amount of energy put into an attempt.
11) Innovative: Applying creative problem-solving and
advanced thinking.

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 12) Competency: The ability to perform efficiently and
successfully.
13) Loyalty: A strong feeling of support or allegiance to
your supporters.
14) Ethics: The morals and principles that govern your
behavior.
15) Patience: The capacity to tolerate delay or suffering
without getting upset.
16) Desire: A deep feeling of acquiring something or
wishing for it to happen.
17) Sincerity: The quality of being free from pretense and
deceit.
18) Open-Mindedness: The willingness to consider new
ideas without prejudice.

In the eyes of a future NCAA College Coach, these character

traits are equally important to your athlete’s topspin backhand.

78
Negative Character Traits
Character traits are aspects of an athlete’s mental and
emotional (software) components. Your athlete’s mind affects
their behavior on and off the court. Parents must recognize
that just as the numerous positive character traits they strive to
instill in their athletes, there are many negative character traits
they strive to negate.
And while we know coaches try to nurture positive character
traits in their sessions, tennis is a hotbed for negative traits. In
particular, cheating, flipping the score, bending the rules, and
disrespecting your opponent and officials. Allowing bad
character traits to flourish may lead to even more serious
offenses like changing birth certificates, using illegal drugs, and
dishonesty regarding college applications.
Awareness of these “dark passengers” is the key to stopping
them from developing into habits.
Solution: Be honest about the following negative
characteristics and plan to end them at the first sign of trouble.
1) Dishonesty
2) Confrontational
3) Unkind
4) Rude
5) Disrespectful
6) Impatient
7) Abrasive
8) Pessimistic
9) Narcissistic
10) Obnoxious
11) Combative
12) Unforgiving

79
More often than not, athletes with negative character traits
have been allowed to display unsportsmanlike behaviors
because some parents find it easier to ignore the destructive
behaviors and hope they go away. On rare occasions, athletes
are simply modeling parental negative character traits.
Avoidance does not solve the problem.

80
Psychosomatic Dramas
Pre-match problems that are invented are called
psychosomatic dramas. This condition involves feelings of
physical symptoms, usually lacking a clear medical explanation.
Athletes with these symptoms may have excessive thoughts,
feelings, or concerns about competition, affecting their ability
to perform well.
Some athletes are prone to worry. A junior competitor who
seems to have excess fear creates psychosomatic problems. By
inventing problems, they temporarily get to avoid actual
vulnerability. Most athletes who deny inventing their pre-
match drama share a common way of thinking: “If I give 100%
effort and fail, it’s all on me… it’s my fault. But if I say that I’m injured
or sick and then happen to lose, I’m giving myself a built-in excuse. This
way, losing isn’t so painful.”
The preventive medicine approach is needed to reduce
competitive stress. These tips can assist your athlete in
managing their mental health and improving their sanity come
game day. I recommend experimenting with coping strategies.
Solution: The preventive medicine approach includes the
following:
 Accept your feelings but don’t chase them.
 Prioritize controlling what’s controllable
 Practice relaxation. Deep breathing/meditation
 Going for a run naturally produces stress-relieving
hormones
 Ask them to Google: Fear, then discuss it.
 Ask them to Google: Psychosomatic issues, then
discuss them.

81
Junior competitors sometimes hold perfectionism traits. These
traits lead to fear of failure because they worry it might define
them. In the psychological world, the term is Atelophobia, an
actual fear of flaws. Athletes with Atelophobia may develop a
fear of competition. Please remind your athlete that in 2017
Novak Djokovic won 53% of his points, Roger Federer won
54.5%, and Rafael Nadal won 55% of his points played. They
chase excellence, not perfection.

82
Parental Stressors
Understanding how to handle parental stressors allows you to
thrive in this high-pressure environment. Parents would be
wise to build coping strategies to thrive along this journey. Left
unattended parental stress can have a very negative impact on
your athlete’s mental health and performance ability.
But what exactly are these stressors, and how can parents
identify them to adjust and ultimately limit the negative impact
they can have on their athlete?
Solution: Read the following everyday stressors and identify
which stressors may be affecting your life. The goal as a tennis
parent is to create a plan for dealing with stressors, as they will
surely be ever-present.
Organizational Stressors
 Coaching Issues
 Practice Scheduling/Coordination
 Tournament Scheduling
 Equipment Management
 Interpersonal Conflicts
 Perceived Lack of Support from Organization
 Travel Logistics

Match Day Stressors

 Outcome Wants
 Injuries
 Gamesmanship
 Nervousness
 Untrustworthy Mechanics
 Tournament Draw

83
Personal Stressors
 Lifestyle Issues
 Work Commitments
 Lack of Personal Time
 Financial Issues
 Social Factors
 Outside Commitments

Considering how much we love our children and how much

the family is committed to our children’s careers, feeling
stressed can all be normal reactions to the competitive tennis
world. If stress is getting the best of you, I suggest taking
breaks from watching practice sessions or event tournament
play. Avoid negative tennis parents that upset you. Finally, take
care of your health. Make time to exercise and reconnect with
your non-tennis friends.

84
Thriving vs. Suffering
We know that the lion’s share of gifted athletes never sees the
higher levels of the sport. They possess the apparent physical
ability but fall short of the psychological traits needed at the
higher levels. What are the distinguishing factors that separate
the athletes who thrive in the later years of high-performance
tennis versus those phenoms who show great promise and
then suffer and burn out?
Solution: Twelve software topics to discuss:
1) Frustration Tolerance: The best athletes can remain
calm under adversity.
2) Focus Ability: This allows the top athlete to stay in
the moment, match after match.
3) Seek Growth: Trust in the learning process. With
losses and setbacks comes the opportunity for
improvement.
4) Conquer Fear: They compartmentalize their worries
and focus on their performance goals.
5) Confidence Is Nurtured: Inner belief is promoted as a
form of positive brainwashing.
6) Effort and Sacrifice: Without self-discipline, physical
talent is wasted.
7) A Sense of Gratitude: Appreciating the journey.
8) Innate Ability to Fight: Keeping their foot firmly on
the gas from the first point until they cross the finish
line.
9) Courage: To make bold, quick, Intelligent decisions at
crunch time.
10) Optimism: In every division, to be the best, one must
beat the best, which requires inner belief.
11) Leadership: They bring out the best in themselves and
those around them

85
 12) Ability to Suffer: Grit, resiliency, and the capacity to
handle hardships.

By understanding and applying these software essentials, your

athlete will thrive under the typical game-day stress of
competition.

86
Spotting Anomalies
To get to the bottom of improving, I’d start by spotting
anomalies. What are the anomalies in your athlete’s four pillars
of their foundation? The four pillars are strokes, athleticism,
mental and emotional.
Anomalies are anything that should be present but isn’t present
and anything present that shouldn’t be present. Hiring an
experienced, high-IQ tennis coach is a great start. They’ve seen
hundreds, if not thousands, of athletes. They have an eye for
recognizing these anomalies. (Reminder- A young adult that is
an ex-college tennis player doesn’t necessarily make them a
high IQ coach.)
Solution: Start with the fundamentals. If you’re a DIY parent,
start with a new assessment of their strokes. Maybe the
mechanics aren’t perfect but are they efficient? If there are
improvements required, list them. Then shift to athleticism.
Are any basic components lacking (speed, agility, strength,
endurance)? If there are improvements needed, list them. How
about the mental game? Often, it’s their millisecond decision-
making skills under pressure. Are they running the play the
moment demands? If there are improvements needed, list
them. Lastly, it’s how they handle competitive drama. It’s not
the drama; it’s how they respond to the drama you’re
examining. If there are improvements needed, list them.
Text your list to your athlete’s coach. Ask them to customize
the training to their specific needs versus the typical one size
fits all training approach.
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87
88
CHAPTER 7: Sabotaging Athletic Performance

“Discomfort leads to growth.”

89
When Advice Creates Drama

“I always tell my kid the same thing, and they don’t listen to me!”

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of

Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) states that there is a
neurobiology of attachment between parents and children. As
you intuitively know, the learning environment becomes more
challenging when the athlete can’t separate the role of a loving
parent and a demanding coach.
The athlete’s perceived lack of a consistent, caring parental
relationship often instigates and prolongs dramatic coaching
exchanges. The parent-coach dual role can make it more
difficult for the athlete to regulate emotions, develop
confidence, or build a trusting athlete-coach bond.
Solution:
If your athlete is resisting your parental coaching role, I suggest
letting go of the “coaching gig.” Now, this doesn’t mean that
you should completely detach. It means adjusting your parental
coaching role to keep the love of the sport and the love
between you and your athlete alive. So, if you believe your role
as your athlete’s primary coach is essential, hire a primary coach
to channel your strategies. Now you have a team working
together; your athlete will feel free to express their needs and
wants without fearing losing their parent’s love and respect.
Here are a few tips:
 Keep Things Fun
 Ask and Listen
 Promote Long Term Goals

90
  Emulate Leaders
 Respect their Personality Profile
 Guide them to Better Choices
 Avoid Lecturing
 Apply Modeling
 Build Relationships with the Coaches
 Provide Love Regardless of Results
Although coaching your child may be enjoyable and more
economical, being your child’s coach may stunt their growth if
they challenge your coaching role. It is common for parental
coaches to eventually retire from their coaching gig and
recommit to being their child’s full-time essential parents.

91
Suffering Defeat X 3
Sophia and her folks are New Yorkers. They ditched the big
city during early Covid for a better life in Boca Raton, Florida.
Her father, Dr. Levinstein, is oblivious that he’s killing the love
of the game for his daughter. Sophia’s on the verge of quitting
the sport, and Doc hasn’t a clue.
Each time Sophia loses a match, the loss stings- first defeat.
Then on the car ride home, the good Doctor rehashes all of
Sophia’s mistakes in great detail- second defeat. At Sophia’s
tennis lesson the following day, Dr. Levinstein thinks he’s
helping Sophia by starting the session by unloading on her
tennis coach as Sophia shakes her head in disgust behind his
back. He revisits his list of sloppy mechanics, slow movement
issues, reckless shot choices, and her ability to gain a lead and
then gift it away- third defeat.
For every loss that Sophia suffers, she has to relive the agony
of defeat not once, not twice, but three times. Suffering three
separate times for each loss is something no athlete should
have to endure.
Solution: Begin with setting boundaries regarding when and
where match reviews take place. After a loss when the wound
is raw isn’t appropriate. Showering the coach with all your
child’s faults during their scheduled lesson time is incredibly
embarrassing to teens and isn’t appropriate. (Not to mention
wasting their developmental time and your money).
Be prepared to exit the “Tennis” relationship for a while if
necessary. Surround your athlete with supportive
replacements. If solutions aren’t attainable, I highly
recommend keeping the father-daughter relationship intact
and letting go of your weekend coaching gig.

92
Life Skills Through Tennis
The truth is, most often, sports don’t teach life skills; they
expose them. Competition reveals underdeveloped life skills;
the athlete has to be taught how to improve that individual skill
set.
If you’re paying a technical coach to fix stroke mechanics,
please don’t assume they’re teaching your kids life skills. The
common misconception is that your child’s coaches are
teaching those critical abilities. Most often, parents assume that
the coaches are educating life skills, and the coaches assume
that the parents are teaching them. Guess what? No one is.
Solution: Psychosocial competence or life skills are abilities
and behaviors that enable athletes to deal with the demands
and challenges of competition on and off the tennis court. Be
mindful of who’s developing the character traits of your child
daily. The type of individual your child becomes is dictated by
who is nurturing them.

93
Knowledge Versus Wisdom
Uneducated parents can cause incredible amounts of stress
without knowing. Guess what the #1 reason why our children
quit tennis? Their answer is crazy obsessed parents. One who
understands what to say has knowledge; one who understands
when to say it has wisdom. There are obstacles to
communication between a parent, coach, and the young
athlete. Awareness of the athlete’s attention, lack of interest, or
difference in opinion is a start.
Before any educational or motivational lecture begins, think
about what is happening in their world. Children often don’t
hear the message you’re attempting to send. They tend to
magnify the negatives and quickly forget the positives.
Children tend to pick up nonverbal clues and tone of voice
before the content of your insightful tip, so think about how
and when you’re delivering your message.
Solution: Understanding your athlete’s unique personality
profile assists in grasping how they accept data. Wisdom
involves locking into the listener’s needs and emotional
perspective before communication begins. Also, focus on
giving without expecting, argue less, stop comparing your child
with their peers, avoid participating in gossip, eliminate
judgment and choose not to live vicariously through your child.

94
Discomfort is Good
In most of life, those who achieve comfort perceive that
they’re on the right path. Similarly, uncomfortable feelings
mean you’re on the wrong path. In developing a high-
performance athlete, the truth is often the opposite.
Discomfort is the first sign of progress in the realm of athletic
development. Temporary discomfort creates growth. As
athletes attempt new motor programs, their bodies create new
neural pathways. The process typically involves feeling worse
before feeling better because the athlete doesn’t have their old
comfortable habit any longer, but the new pathway isn’t fully
developed yet. This “in-between” phase is essential to
comprehend. Without the proper understanding, the athlete
reverts back at the first sign of discomfort. So, temporary
discomfort is good for athletic development.
Solution: Once an athlete agrees to challenge themselves,
great things happen. Teach your athlete that placing
themselves into unfamiliar situations and conquering the
challenge often produces dopamine (the feel-good chemical)
in their brain. So, a bit of discomfort is the catalyst for growth.
Athletes can expand their comfort zone only by first
experiencing discomfort.

95
What If's
Peak performance in sports occurs when the athlete has a
relaxed mental state, heart rate, and a feeling of calm,
controlled aggression. Overthinking about the "What ifs" is
toxic because they contaminate the mind with swirling
unwanted thoughts. Athletes who worry about outcome
consequences during the match lose focus on their game plan
and get in the way of their performance.
Solution: Educate your athlete to shift from a worrier mindset
to a warrior mindset. Shifting to a warrior mindset begins and
ends with better rituals. Preplanned situational protocols are
the key to avoiding self-sabotaging performance.
In between points is when they should put great effort into a
new system. Start by developing their very own external and
internal programs. External favorites include: walking back
towards the back fence with a calm assertive presence, going
to their towel, taking three deep breaths to manage their
breathing, and standing calm and still.
Internal favorites include paying attention to self-awareness,
opponent awareness, and score management. Examples are
covered in great detail throughout the following pages.
Mentally tough competitors keep their minds full of strategic
intentions. A full mind doesn't drift into the "what ifs." An
empty mind is dangerous because unwanted, contaminating
thoughts can come rushing in. I recommend decisively
planning the next point, trusting your athleticism, and playing
to win versus not to lose.

96
Visiting Their Peak Level
Juniors learning to master their sport often experience a short
tolerance for their upper limit of focus. This high-
performance level is exciting and new but also confusing and
uncomfortable. Because new is viewed as different, it’s
painful, and junior players often self-sabotage to bring
themselves back down to their current comfort level.
Simply put, they have difficulty competing at such a high level
for extended periods because they don’t believe in their new
game. While performing in the right brain subconscious flow
state, most athletes stop the great flow by shifting to the left
brain, analyzing mode. They “break the spell” of the quiet
mind of performance and start thinking, “Man, I’m on fire…
I’m killing this top seed. I should win this tournament easily!” POOF
... They’re then back to reality.
Athletes visiting their peak performance level is the first
experience playing free from judgment and worry.
Solution: Your athlete’s self-perception is forming, and it’s
the parental job to help assist their view. The image they hold
about their future abilities is being established. Your words
manipulate their perception. Please keep in mind that athletes
cannot outperform their belief system. Paint the pictures in
their head of their future self. Please respect that their brains
aren’t fully developed, so tread lightly with damaging
negativity. Their inner belief and the quality of their future
depend on it.
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97
98
CHAPTER 8: Change Equals Improvement

“Everything Measurable Can Be Improved.”

99
Avoidance versus Exposure
Although avoidance can lead to temporary relief from anxiety,
the avoidance approach typically creates deeper fear in the
future. By putting off solutions, athletes unknowingly multiply
their anxiety about the topic. Exposure strategies are more
proactive. They lead to a way out of the drama while
minimizing stress in the future. What helps an athlete improve?
Avoidance or exposure? In the world of performance anxieties,
the answer is more exposure. But what do most athletes
choose? Avoidance.
Sometimes the most profound tip is the simplest. New, correct
pathways often change athletic careers. The old saying is,
“What you resist persists.” Teaching your youngster that
avoidance can increase anxiety isn’t an easy sell, which is why
most teaching professionals avoid it. Keeping lessons light
decreases the drama of facing real issues, so most tennis pros
avoid changing anything serious. If your athlete is hesitant to
face their fears, these few tips should help.
Solution: Deciding on a plan and then putting it into action
begins with sitting down and talking with your athlete. Start the
conversation by acknowledging that you feel anxious about a
particular topic and then ask them about their true feelings
towards the issue. Let them know you want to support them
and enjoy your time together through their tennis journey.
Remind them that it’s no accident that “Unshakeable” athletes
are the way they are. It’s not by CHANCE ...but by CHOICE.
Next, nudge them in the direction that the most crucial
component to control in the world of competition isn’t the
drama; it’s their reaction to the drama. Then bring to light the
reoccurring drama in your athlete’s matches and devise those
customized solutions.

100
Competitive Pressure Triggers
Competitive pressure triggers are some of the most common
stressors found in junior tennis. Guiding athletes to step
beyond stroke mechanics allows them to look into the face of
their match time anxieties. What are the athlete's fears, worries,
and anxieties? Most juniors stress out about a few of these
pressure triggers. Identifying your athlete's stressors starts here
in the below top 10 stressors list.
Solution: After identifying the cause of your athlete's panic,
it's time to ask their coach to help plug in a customized
solution. Every topic that causes pressure needs more
exposure. The problems lie in that most junior athletes avoid
the difficulties they should be focusing on in hopes that they
will go away. So, what will help your athlete conquer their
performance anxieties, avoidance, or exposure?
Competitive Pressure Triggers
1) Scoring Systems / Certain Stages of The
Competition/Start Times
2) Opponent's Style of Play/Personality
3) Gamesmanship
4) Draw/Seeding
5) Spectators/Cameras
6) Environment/Conditions
7) Court Surface
8) Current Fitness/Energy Levels -Pain Tolerance
Threshold
9) Untrustworthy Mechanics
10) Outcome Anxieties.

Any topics that cause the athlete stress should be discussed.

Solutions to overcoming the athlete's pressure riggers should
be put into place.

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Comfort Is Where Dreams Go to Die
Let’s use an archer’s bullseye target as an analogy to illustrate
the growth cycle of an athlete. The target rings have several
colors. The black outer ring represents your child’s comfort
zone. The inner blue rings represent the fear zone. The red-
colored ring represents your athlete’s mastery zone. The inner
circle or bullseye is yellow, representing the management zone.
Top athletes have to manage the tools they’ve mastered.
Common issues occur when the athlete would rather remain
moderately uncomfortable yet safe instead of dealing with the
uncertainties that would make a real change in their life. I
recommend asking your athlete to repeat this saying:
“If I Keep on Doing What I’ve Always Done…I’m Gonna Keep
Getting What I Always Got”
Solution: Improving your athlete’s performance starts by
understanding the growth cycle. Athletes must be ready and
willing to leave their Comfort Zone and step into their Fear
Zone. Only by passing through the Fear Zone can Mastery be
attained. After skills are mastered, managing those skills takes
place. The pathway:
“Comfort Zone ... Fear Zone ...Mastery Zone ...Management Zone”
My mentor, the late Vic Braden, said this a thousand times:
“Once the pain of losing to another inferior opponent overrides the pain of
change, the prognosis is good for quick improvement.” If change is still
more painful, growth is stalled.

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Changing Inner Belief
Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.
Teach your athlete that we all have empowering and
destructive beliefs. Remind them that the power of positive
inner belief will become thoughts that guide their new actions.
It’s important to note: Athletes can’t outplay their belief
system, so if they think they can or can’t, they’re usually right.
One of the reasons that it’s challenging to change emotional
habits is that the athlete is usually loyal to them only because
they’ve believed in them for so long. Changing their
perspective will take commitment from the athlete, parent, and
coach. If your athlete is willing to improve their inner belief at
crunch time, these ten tips are for you.
Solutions: Parents, please ask your athlete to utilize the
following tips:
1) Choose inner dialog and positive self-talk that boosts
confidence versus the standard negative monologue
that derails confidence.
2) Please list of all your unique strengths, then one by
one, appreciate them.
3) Employ SMART goals which are Specific,
Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
Reminder: Winning every time isn’t a smart goal.
4) Develop a skill each day. Inner belief comes from
growth.
5) Seek new inspiring mentors as trusted advisors.
6) Nourish your inner belief by exchanging pointless
social media with informative YouTube posts
regarding confidence and belief.

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 7) The human mind magnifies the bad. So, review the
matches you were clutch under pressure versus those
you gifted away.
8) Focus on what could go right versus what could go
wrong.
9) Remember: Where your focus goes, energy flows.”
10) If you’re going to have an attitude, make it gratitude.

Changing inner belief begins with these ten simple reminders.

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Losing to Lesser Players
Parents and athletes don’t want to hear this truth, but whatever
victories appear will appear as part of the plan. Meaning, often
losses are losses because there are still lessons to be learned.
Even though no one likes losses, they’re necessary for an
athlete to reach high-performance status.
View losses as vehicles to assist your child’s future
developmental plan. Without these “failures,” a customized
developmental plan can’t be organized and put into play. These
losses point the direction of the upcoming training sessions
and lead to maximizing potential at a quicker rate.
Solution: Discuss how there’s more to competition than meets
the eye. To best serve your athlete, enlighten them about the
four pillars found within the hardware and software of a top
athlete. Let’s review again; the hardware includes the sports
mechanics and specific athleticism requirements. The software
consists of the sports, mental and emotional realms. If you’re
attending the matches instead of your child’s coach, text the
coach the inefficient topics they can add to their improvement
list. Making the athlete accountable for solving problems is a
critical factor. So, ask your athlete if they can meet with their
coach and discuss their opinion of a few performance
improvements they want to add to that list.

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Trimming the Fat
What really comes before your athlete earns a room full of
National trophies?
I’m going to share a mantra of mine regarding preparation.
Before your athlete raises big-time trophies, they must raise the
level of their four essential components (stroke mechanics,
tennis-specific movement, mental strategies, and emotional
responses). The secret isn’t adding more but trimming the fat.
Let me say that again. The secret isn’t adding more but to trim
the fat.
As high IQ coaches spot anomalies, they often find that too
much extra is going on within their student’s game. Simplifying
often streamlines improvement. Everything measurable can be
improved. Lean principles will improve efficiency.
Solution: Examples of trimming the fat include:
 Strokes: Too big a backswing.
 Footwork: Not applying the open stance on wide
balls.
 Mental: Going off script with low percentage tactics.
 Emotional: Being emotionally hijacked by their
outcome wants.

The best athletes have refined their skill sets. Find simplicity,
and trim the fat away from each component. Avoid flawed
training habits, and your athlete will be ready to perform
more efficiently come game day.

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The Pain of Changing
Improving stems from changing; to some junior athletes,
change is more painful than losing. That’s correct. The pain of
making needed changes is more agonizing than losing tennis
matches. Use the dieting industry as an example. We know that
exercise and eating healthy are the answer, but that agony is
more painful than not fitting into our skinny jeans. So, we don’t
change.
For some, change only happens when the athlete is tired of not
getting the results they are capable of reaching. When that pain
is greater than the pain of hard work, they’ll choose the hard
work because it’s less painful. If improving is of the utmost
importance, I suggest a quarterly reboot. Here’s how:
Solution: To maximize potential, routinely take your athlete
out of the tournament cycle for a couple of weeks every
quarter. This scheduled time off will kick start the freedom
change demands for improvement. After all, if they don’t
continually improve, their results will disappear.
Opponents around the globe are training with sports science
efficiency. If your athlete wants better results, they must
become better athletes. This desire takes a parent who can
organize the athlete’s enhancement schedule and an athlete
mature enough to focus on making the changes required. You
first have to develop a better competitive athlete to achieve
those better results.
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107
108
CHAPTER 9: Frustration Tolerance

“A Better Mindset Cultivates Better Results.”

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Understanding Frustration
Frustration is a negative emotion that stands in the way of
many athletes’ outcome goals. It’s that reoccurring feeling of
annoyance stemming from the inability to solve problems.
Here’s the fact: Ideally, tennis “problems” that arise in the heat
of the battle should have preset solutions.
The ability to deal with frustration is known as frustration
tolerance. Whether your athlete was born with a short fuse or
nurtured to get annoyed quickly, a low frustration tolerance
doesn’t have to be permanent. Intermediate athletes with low
frustration tolerance may give up on challenging tasks quickly.
The mere thought of everything not going their way may feel
unbearable. They may get angry, lose control, or avoid tough
tasks altogether. (Like closing out leads in matches.)
Low frustration tolerance can take a severe toll on their long-
term outcome goals and relationships.
Top tennis players with high frustration tolerance can deal with
setbacks successfully. Frustration tolerance is a critical
mental/emotional component. Those intermediate athletes
who can handle setbacks are more likely to persist at their
performance goals and then progress into the advanced levels.
Those who can’t control their frustration rarely reach their full
potential.
Solution: Parents should ask their athletes to peek into the
future at all the winnable matches they will likely lose with this
poor behavior. As players progress, they’ll be competing
against better opponents, meeting better hitting partners,
better doubles partners, different coaches, and college
teammates, and low frustration tolerance levels will affect these
relationships, if not stop them, before they even begin. In the
eyes of a college tennis coach, this poor behavior is a major red
flag that stops the recruiting process dead in its tracks.

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Managing Frustration
Taming anger and frustration can be challenging, especially if
you and your athlete believe competitive tennis should be fair.
Tennis often isn’t fair. When faced with an opponent who
makes bad calls, is your athlete able to manage the situation
with maturity? Does the one-point drama spiral into 20
minutes of unfocused frustration? Here is the analogy: When
a poisonous snake bites you, do you die from that bite? Yes, or
no? The answer is no. The venom coursing through your veins
for the next few hours does you in, not the singular bite.
Solution: Managing frustration starts with monitoring it.
Applying my “stress balloon theory” helps keep anger at bay.
Ask your athlete to envision there’s a balloon above their head.
After each frustrating point, ask them to pretend they inflated
stressful air into that balloon. If they continually inflate the
balloon, point after point, it will soon pop. When that stress
balloon pops, the athlete typically unplugs and tanks.
The solution is to systematically deflate that balloon by
applying between-point rituals. Religiously letting the stressful
air out, the balloon doesn’t pop. These rituals act as a 20-
second “time out” to better prepare athletes by allowing them
to identify solutions for what lies ahead. When temper flares,
ask your child to replace focusing on the problem with
focusing on the solution.

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Desensitizing To Hardships
The ugly truth is that there is unfair scheduling, gamesmanship,
jealousy, and pettiness in the junior tennis scene, and parents
and players need to be desensitized to it.
Your athletes require hardening to the challenges of
competition. These hardships come in the way of their so-
called friends applying passive-aggressive behavior to sabotage
their minds before their match, to “creative line callers,” to
poor draws, lousy start times, and inclement weather. Can your
athlete handle the drama that shadows junior tennis?
Developing thick skin in and around tournament competition
is a life skill worth educating.
Solution: If a bit of maturity and confidence is what your
athlete needs, enroll them in other competitive sports. Team
sports are terrific for the younger crew, and boxing or martial
arts are recommended for the older teens. Playing different
sports exposes and helps develop the mental toughness,
athleticism, life skills, and character traits junior tennis players
need. Here is a great example. Tennis players need the
experience of confrontation to develop that thick skin.
Handling combative opponents requires exposure to the
battle. Remember the concept: Athletes need exposure, not
avoidance when it comes to finding solutions under fire. Sports
bring hardship before the trophies. Being a multi-sport athlete
desensitizes your athlete to the dramas found in competition.

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Did You Win?
It is incredible how much self-inflicted contamination is
created daily by parents and junior tennis players. Here is a
prime example: what is the worst question parents can ask after
practice sets or a match? The answer was, “Did you win?” Now
guess what the most common question parents ask after
practice sets or a match is? You guessed it, “Did you win?”
Parents need to replace an outcome obsession with
improvement questions like: “Did you perform well today?”
Remind your athlete that their real competition is in their
mirror, and the only person they have to beat is the person they
were last week. Asking your athlete, “Did you win?” pulls them
away from focusing on their daily improvement goals and
towards outcome goals because of the need for your love and
approval. Athletes stressed about proving their worth to their
parents are not free to focus on improving their untrustworthy
skills. Athletes in this “winning is everything.” mindset only
applies the comfortable skills they already own, not to
disappoint their parents. This behavior stunts the growth
parents seek.
Solution: Exchange the “Did you win?” question with
performance-based inquiries. Another typical tennis parent
blunder is booking their athletes into practice sets with higher-
ranked players and then being crazy upset when their child
does not win. Practice sets are learning tools to strengthen your
athlete’s match play skills and identify those skills that are not
ready for prime time.
If the parent is constantly in need of wins and a shelf full of
plastic trophies, schedule sets with lower-ranked individuals
and only register your child into low-level event.

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Perfectionism
Research shows that perfectionism is a precursor of anxiety,
stress, and even depression. Perfectionist athletes are likelier to
experience decreased productivity, hesitation and impaired
judgments, trouble with relationships, and low self-esteem.
Consistent perfectionism in competition brings a circle of
performance anxieties as the athlete judges every performance
aspect. Think for a moment about the cycles of life. Seasons
change. Night follows day.
If you and your athlete are going to chase a sport to the top,
those dreams come with breathtaking highs and devastating
lows. Life is funny that way. If your athlete believes they should
be spectacular enough to win every match, they haven’t yet
accepted the reality of high-performance tennis.
Solution: Ask your athlete to Google the definition of
perfectionism. As your athlete researches perfectionism, they
will soon uncover its toxic negative energy.
Develop your athlete to expect excellence and leave perfect
alone. Athletes who accept excellence have a terrific prognosis
to reach the higher levels of the sport. Teach your children that
two steps forward and one step back is a common progression
for a competitive athlete. Ask your athletes to accept the cycles
of progress and leave the performance anxieties to their
opponents.
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114
CHAPTER 10: Concentration and Focus

“Run Towards Fear.”

115
Regulating Focus
There will be stages in your athlete’s future matches when they
face dramatic obstacles, from creative line callers to those who
flip the score to opponents well-trained to get under their skin.
Your athlete needs to preset their protocols in the form of
routines to combat future gamesmanship. Regulating their
attention around their performances will help them overcome
the drama that comes with some matches.
Most importantly, mentally tough athletes need concentrated
focus in-between points to desensitize the drama and navigate
the match. This emotional strength, of course, is the non-
hitting portion of their match performance. In between points,
your athlete needs to pay close attention to three areas of their
Between-Point Rituals (BPR). They include self-awareness,
opponent awareness, and score management. Self-awareness
and opponent awareness is based on paying attention to the
patterns and tactics of the athlete and their opponents. Score
management allows the athlete to modify their aggressiveness
based on the score.
Solution: Ask your athlete to take their between-point rituals
very seriously. Mentally tough competitors rely on the non-
hitting time on-court. Most thinking, perception, memory,
learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making
happen in-between points. On rare occasions, athletes need to
call audibles mid-point.
Most intermediate athletes have focused exclusively on their
hardware for years with their technical coaches. If they’ve got
great form but aren’t getting the results they’re capable of, it
may be time to reroute some attention to their software
development.

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Overthinking Mechanics
We, tennis teachers, are notorious for giving tons of technical
advice. We tend to provide too much information to our
clients than not enough. I’m guilty of this myself. Parents listen
and digest these mechanical tips and “assist” by obsessively
reminding their athletes on match days.
Overemphasizing perfect mechanics creates a constant flow of
corrections in your athlete’s mind. If the parent’s or coach’s
dialog is a continual stream of problems to be fixed, the athlete
is most likely to be thinking about all that is broken in a match,
and this is a catastrophic mindset. It’s our primary job as
parents to build confidence. If your athlete is on high alert for
what is broken, they will not be able to find the mindset needed
to compete effortlessly in their peak performance zone.
Solution: Teach your athlete that one of the biggest obstacles
in matches is overthinking their mechanics. While quickly
adjusting technique is fine, the constant over-analyzing stops
their positive flow of energy.
A better mindset in matches requires seeking excellence versus
perfection.
Nobody’s perfect. Rafa and Serena aren’t perfect so, why
should your child be perfect? All of your player’s strokes are
not going to be perfect all of the time. Junior athletes are going
to make good and bad decisions, to boot! Educate your athlete
that it’s not the errors but how they react to them that matters
most. After all, your athlete’s thoughts and judgments, good or
bad, are self-fulfilling.

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Limiting Distractions
In competitive tennis, concentration is the ability to focus only
on a few thoughts. This simplification is accomplished by
excluding every other unrelated, contaminating, toxic thought
from their mind. Concentration means control of attention.
In sports, concentration relates to focusing the mind only on
performance goals associated with the present competition.
It’s a different world today. A constant flow of information
bombards teens. The sheer quantity of distractions from their
smartphones is a factor that stimulates the mind to lose focus
quickly.
Solution: Just because a thought enters your athlete’s brain
doesn’t mean they have to believe it and chase it down. Here’s
a helpful guide to help your athletes concentrate deeper and
longer:
 Limit distractions.
 Say “not yet” to irrelevant thoughts.
 Introduce “no talking” periods in training.
 Get sufficient sleep.
 Fuel the brain with nutrition/hydration.
 Utilize routines and rituals.
 Focus is a choice.
 Use a timer to monitor the process.
 Remedy worrying.

Concentration is a learned skill that takes attention and focus.

Control in tennis is not just about controlling their topspin
backhand. It also involves controlling their wandering mind.

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Time Traveling
Most focus issues involve time traveling to the past or future
with both positive and negative thoughts. Staying in the here
and now is a skill essential for success on and off the court.
Adolescents can apply this to many aspects of their life. If they
are studying for a massive test, take it one page at a time.
Working on a school presentation, one PowerPoint slide at a
time.
Solution: Avoiding “time traveling” mentally to the future or
the past is a key to becoming world-class in any endeavor. In
tennis matches, it’s wise to only focus on winning two points
in a row; saying “starting right now” reduces the perceived
mental weight of the event. Applying internal between-point
and changeover rituals keeps their mind busy on their next
performance goal. Staying “plugged in” to the moment holds
profound benefits.

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Living in the Present
Let’s look at being performance oriented through a different
lens. The more mature an athlete gets, the more they realize
that worrying about the outcome or reliving past mistakes isn’t
as important as performing in the moment. Future thoughts
such as anxiety, tension, stress, and worry are all forms of fear.
The feelings of guilt, regret, resentment, jealousy, and
bitterness are all caused by past thinking. Future and past
thoughts destroy performing in the moment.
There is a mindset shift that parents can impact. Teach your
athlete that increasing their rankings and ratings starts with
their ability to improve, which stems from living in the present.
Avoiding mental “time traveling” helps prevent the stress that
holds many junior athletes captive. A wise athlete doesn’t tie
their happiness to outcomes but to the quality of their training
and competitive performances.
Solution: Living in the moment is one of the hidden skills of
a calm, composed competitor. Mentally playing in the “here
and now” means that the athlete is most mindful of what is
happening at this very moment. While they consider past and
future thoughts, they are not haunted by the past or worried
about the future but are centered on their performance goals.
Ask your athletes to achieve this healthy balance. It’s 10% past,
80% current, and 10% future thoughts. Within this guideline,
the athlete must think about the past in small doses to identify
where they went wrong or remember past success. Ask them
to think about the future in small doses as well. Teach them to
remain in the present moment for most of their match time
with little judgment, editing, and negative emotions.
Great moments are only built in the here and now. If you or
your athlete abandons the present, neither of you will have
moments to cherish.

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Relaxed Observations
At tournament sites, often, the parents strained faces mirror
the strained faces of their athletes. The emotional display of
the parents illustrates their minds working desperately to
control the match’s outcome.
When the mind is working overtime for control, it leads to
adverse physical reactions. Unbeknownst to the parent, a
“cause and effect” occurs. As the young athlete makes another
error, they show dissatisfaction. They sneak a peek at you and
see you’re shaking your head in disgust. This judgment
magnifies the athlete’s disappointment. Then a cycle of
contagious overthinking runs the show until another winnable
match is gifted away.
Solution: The goal is to enjoy and appreciate watching with
gratitude. Parental energy overtakes the athlete- Calm
manifests calm, anger ignites anger, and crazy, well, you get it.
What’s the match day desired outcome? Is it for them to master
their new skill sets or to win every match they ever play? Which
seems healthy and logical?
Parents who focus on performance goals versus outcome
wishes stay calm when their athlete inevitably makes a few
unforced errors, drops games, sets, or even matches. Relaxed
observation is the goal of a successful tennis parent.
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121
122
CHAPTER 11: Mental Fitness

“Speculations Are Only Illusions.”

123
Cherish the Obsession
Successful athletes are not the most naturally gifted; they
typically work smarter. So, what does that mean? Champions
don’t train until they get it right. They train until they can’t get
it wrong. This perseverance goes past the conscious effort of
performing a task and into their subconscious performance.
Also, as parents, we mistakenly think that success stems from
the time our athletes put in. Instead, think about the deliberate
quality of that time as most important. It is intelligent training
and consistent effort that equates to winning. When it comes
to daily, consistent work, does your athlete turn up their sleeves
or nose?
Solution: Success is no accident. Teach them that they have to
sacrifice today for their dreams of tomorrow. Talk to your
young athlete about how hard work is, often doing what they
don’t want to do. It is perseverance, learning from failures,
understanding their unique strengths, and willingness to suffer.
Most of all, teach them the love of learning. Champions
cherish the obsession and understand that at the higher levels,
no one can excel with physical talent alone; triumph stems
from mental and emotional clarity. You’ll have to lead the way
and shape the world you desire for your child.

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Hey Jude
Tennis is a terrific hobby. The benefits are tremendous. A
question to ask yourself is: “Who desires a high-performance
tennis lifestyle?” Is it the parent or the junior athlete? Elite
athletes and hobbyist athletes are worlds apart. Here is an
analogy, the skill comparison of a classically trained pianist
versus those of us who can fumble through “HEY JUDE’ at
home on the piano. We are both playing the piano but at very
different skill levels. We are where we are due to our habits;
these routines make or break us. The second question is to ask
your child, “Do you want to train like an elite athlete, or are
you happy just playing socially?
Solution: If your child chooses high-performance competitive
sports, you have some serious work ahead. Parents can start by
assisting in organizing the WHOLE GAME approach. This
preplanning requires time management to customize a weekly
developmental plan replicating the school methodology.
In school, children shift daily from course to course. The same
method applies to high-performance athletics. Just as there are
math, science, and English in school, there are also subjects
called components in sports. Remember, solid hardware and
software skills are essential at the higher levels of every sport.
Hire a coach with a high tennis IQ, along with the coach; set
aside time to expand your athlete’s mechanics, athleticism
(hardware), mental, and emotional (software).
Warning: Athletes who only focus on hardware skills week in
and week out often wilt come game day, so be sure to schedule
mental and emotional training blocks.

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Mental Fitness
We all know the benefits of physical well-being. Fitness
training options are in almost every strip mall. However,
mental and emotional training is just as essential, with far-
reaching benefits but with very few options. So, what does it
mean to exercise the mind of your athlete? Mentally fit
competitors possess a calm ability to assess the situation and
run the play the moment demands in millisecond precision.
These mentally fit athletes interact with parents, coaches, and
teammates differently than most kids. Mental fitness is
intertwined with physical and emotional health. Each benefits
the other. For example, the more mentally tough an athlete is,
the less fear and stress they suffer. The more emotionally fit
your athlete is, the stronger their immune system is to ward off
sickness. The more physically fit, the less sloppy the athlete’s
cognitive processing.
On a deeper level, mentally fit individuals understand the
processes of analysis. In practice, the conscious mind takes
control of processing information during the developmental or
repetition phase of training. It makes rational decisions by
determining which hardware and software tools are acceptable
and which should be rejected and repaired. It is the part of your
athlete’s brain that thinks and reasons.
In competition, the conscious mind is “on call” between
actions, allowing the subconscious mind to take over via
autopilot during play. Your athlete’s subconscious mind is a
much more powerful force. Neuroscientist report that it makes
up around 95% of your athlete’s brain power. Top athletes
report that their peak performance stems from their
subconscious minds.
Solution: Turning off the analytical, conscious thinking begins
by asking the coach and parents to be mindful of all the

126
analytical requests they are bombarding the athlete in machine-
gun fashion. Distractions needn’t sabotage the subconscious
mind. It would serve the athlete to release judgment until the
competition is completed. It’s our job to educate the athlete to
trust their response to adversity and not to overreact. This
learning process greatly improves their cognitive processing
speed and ability to maintain focus. I’ve found that the less
judgment while performing, the quieter the athlete’s mind, and
this “silent painter” approach supports the positive emotion
that solution-based thinking requires.
Positive thoughts spur positive inner dialog and more
intelligent actions. One of the most sought-after software skill
sets parents seek for their children is more confidence, self-
esteem, and self-efficacy. The belief in their abilities increases
when the athlete is encouraged to focus on practicing mental
fitness.

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Monkey Mind
In a tennis parent’s workshop, Mr. Jackson shares, “As soon as
my daughter feels she is being judged during tournament competition, she
has countless thoughts racing through her brain.” Monkey mind is an
ancient Buddhist term that describes the inability to quiet one’s
mind when many thoughts, ideas, and worries are swirling
around in our head. Such as feeling unsettled, restless, or
indecisive.
Defeating this mindset requires detachment from the ego.
Most worrying is a result of seeking compliments while
avoiding criticism. Caring too much about the outcome kills
the quiet performance athletes seek.
Here is how to get that monkey off their back.
Solution: There’s a big difference between making yourself
perform perfectly and letting yourself perform excellently.
Striving for an excellent performance should be the goal of
every competitive athlete. After all, perfectionism is a toxic lie
in tennis.
These monkey-mind athletes are desperately trying to control
the outcome. It’s our job as parents to encourage our athletes
to only focus on managing their performance which leads the
way to the desired outcome. Controlling the “controllables”
and letting go of other contaminating thoughts is genuinely all
that can be asked of an athlete.

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Constructing Confidence
Developing confidence is a precursor to winning. It is part of
successful preparation that precedes successful results.
Building confidence is a software skill built on
accomplishments, big and small. Think of the small
developmental stepping stones that lead to future success.
They include improved stroke mechanics, better athleticism,
and proper presetting strategies to expose your athlete's
strengths while hiding their weaknesses. Confidence grows
exponentially from presetting solutions to handling
performance anxieties. Astute tennis parents plan on
increasing their athlete's confidence weekly. Here's a handful
of ways to improve your athlete's trust and belief in themselves.
Solution: Begin with designing a weekly planner for your
athlete. Accomplishing tasks and developing new skills start
the confidence ball rolling. Remember that progress is
incremental, and significant changes do not happen overnight.
Start with daily and then weekly goal setting. Once met, repeat
the process adding new skills weekly.
Regarding their confidence-building process, monitor their
progress by asking your athlete's coach to chart stats and
quantify their performance accomplishments. Remind them
that their actions and decisions define their character.
Make a goal-setting plan, accomplish those goals and then
repeat. Your athlete will lose matches along the way but losing
matches isn't a failure if they are seen as growth opportunities.

129
Tennis on TV
The top performers I know have a growth mindset, are always
inquisitive, and constantly searching for any way to improve
their game. Here is how to improve their game while they are
watching tennis on TV:
Solution: Focus their undivided attention on one singular
player and topic. I recommend setting their cell phone
stopwatch to 15 minutes. By committing their undivided
attention to a singular topic for 15 minutes, they will build their
match attention and improve their match focus ability, court
awareness, proper shot choices, and opponent awareness.
Here are five topics to choose from:
1) Watch the Feet. Watch one player’s tennis shoes, their
split steps, recovery steps, crossover steps, back
peddling, and running versus shuffling. These are the
tennis-specific movements to watch instead of simply
watching the ball or the point. Watch only the feet.
Then the objective is to copy their footwork.
2) Watch the Margins. (Inside the court by 3ft). Say
“inside” for every shot landing inside. They’ll learn that
top competitors hit three ft. inside the lines about 80%
of the time. Then the objective is to copy proper
margins.
3) Watch Primary vs. Secondary Shot Selections. (Call
out their shots) Can you identify when & why they’re
using secondary shots? Then the objective is to copy
when and why they’re utilizing these other strokes.
4) Watch the Shot Selections. (Based on: offense,
neutral, and defensive positioning.) Call out the
appropriate choice as the professional chooses offense,
neutral, or defensive shots right after they hit. The
objective is to copy those correct shot selections in
match play.

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 5) Spot the Serve +1 Choices, and their Return +1
Choices. (Where are they serving? Where are they
hitting their returns?) Are they playing catch or keep
away? Are they specifically trying to hit their strengths?
Then the objective is to copy those patterns of play.

After spending a couple of hours a week anticipating

professional tennis players, anticipating their opponents will be
a snap!
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132
CHAPTER 12: Match Day Concepts

“Athletes Learn to Make Good Decisions

When Parents Allow Them to Make
Decisions.

Often There Is No Better Teacher Than

Failure.”

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The Cause of Poor Play
Signs of future poor play are evident to an experienced high
IQ coach. We witness thousands of matches, and similarities
abound. Energy, focus, momentum, and intensity are
challenging to maintain. Educate your athlete that poor play
begins with second-rate focus. If they are going to contend for
a 64-draw event, they’ll have to be able to play roughly 12 peak
performance sets in approximately three days.
Solution: Following are six focus/intensity commonalities that
precede sloppy play. Here is what we see and what your athlete
should identify.
 Shallow Breathing
Oxygen intake is more important than most athletes think.
Intermediate players often take a deep breath before serving
and hold their breath throughout the point. Of course, this has
catastrophic effects on their body. The lack of oxygen to the
muscle groups, the lungs, and the brain causes cramping, early
fatigue, and a lack of cognitive processing.
Exhaling at contact is a fundamental skill. This mechanic is
why you hear top professionals grunt. In between points is
when your athlete applies a slow, relaxed breathing technique
to manage their energy. Without these breathing methods, your
athlete will likely perform great for a set and then lose their
critical momentum, energy, focus, and intensity.
 Tight Muscles
As your athlete’s match evolves into those “tipping point”
moments, we can see their facial muscles begin to tighten.
Their swing speed diminishes as the typical fear of failure
overrides their earlier relaxed aggressive play.
Fear causes a chemical reaction called cortisol dumping. This
hormone is the cause of their tight muscles. As their brain

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triggers its release through the sympathetic nervous system, it
helps their body deal with stressful situations.
The most common stressful situation isn’t when they’re
behind; it’s closing out a lead. Often, athletes are most
vulnerable with a lead. It is worth repeating, “Young athletes
are most vulnerable with a lead.” So, with a lead, ask them to
take more time in-between points to loosen up the tight
muscles by doing kangaroo jumps and shadow “swoosh”
swings before points begin.
 Avoiding Perceived Risks
A reoccurring theme with athletes is unknowingly shifting their
winning ball speed to overcooking or undercooking when they
get anxious or frustrated.
To some athletes, staying in a consistent backcourt rally is a
stressful risk, so they recklessly pull the trigger prematurely to
end the uncomfortable situation. To others, hitting bold is the
risk, so they default to push mode, hoping the opponent
chokes. Discuss if “playing to win” after gaining a lead is in
your athlete’s best interest or “playing not to lose.” Either way,
changing a winning strategy isn’t in their best interest.
 Rushing
Many poor performances start with rushing, which causes poor
planning for the estimated 130 mini-wars (points) during the
match. If they begin to feel like the victim or the prey instead
of the Alpha predator, they need to reboot the alpha mindset.
This attitude adjustment starts with plugging in gratitude.
Appreciate the opportunity to be in this situation. Then once
the attitude is adjusted, adjust the body language. Stop the
slumping, walk tall, and raise their head. Slow down, think
clearly, breathe deep and play to win.

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  Editing

The free-flow state of play is disrupted when athletes slide into

the judgmental and editing mind by over-analyzing mechanics
and focusing on what is not perfect in match play. A
catastrophic scenario, called the amygdala hijack, occurs when
a judgmental mind appears. It resembles a light switch being
turned off. In competition, shoot for excellence, not
perfection. Let the subconscious mind drive the show while
allowing the analytical mind to take the back seat.

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Assuming a Lack of Effort
It’s common for inexperienced tennis parents to believe a lack
of effort is the root cause of their athlete’s poor tournament
results. They watch their kids rallying back and forth with a
coach in practice and unwisely assume that playing a
cooperative game of catch on the practice court resembles a
violent game of keep away in competition.
Parents think they’re not trying hard enough because they saw
how wonderful they hit in practice.
The truth is that competition exposes underdeveloped skills
not seen in practice. Athletes don’t magically rise to the
occasion in matches. They sink to the level of their training.
Stroke, athleticism, and mental and emotional challenges are
exposed under game day pressure. Solutions to real causes
begin with non-threatening conversations. Ask your child’s
high IQ coach to discuss the following topics.
Solution: All athletes tend to struggle at one time or another
with the following mental and emotional match challenges:
Discussion #1: Fear of Failure. Children who are too focused
on not making mistakes in competition cause excess tension.
Overly cautious athletes overthink their performance by
focusing on what could go wrong instead of what could go
right. Discuss how controlled aggression and percentage risk
are part of a champion’s game plan.
Discussion #2: Not Meeting Expectations. False expectations
lead kids to feel like a failure. Some athletes and their parents
have extremely high expectations. Some believe that they’re
going to win every match, every weekend.

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When they don’t meet those predictions, it sets the athlete up
for failure. Discuss if those unrealistic expectations are too
high. I recommend pulling the focus back into the weekly
growth and development of the athlete versus the outcomes of
tournament play.
Discussion #3: Tanking to Salvage Belief. Spectators may
assume that the athlete doesn’t care when they’re tanking, but
often the truth is the opposite. Tanking provides a sense of
hope because not trying with full conviction offers an excuse.
They get frustrated and haven’t found the software skills to
handle the moment. Discuss that these processing skills are
found during the in-between point and changeovers.
Discussion #4: Wanting the Better Athletes to Like Them.
Inexperienced athletes are afraid of upsetting the better
juniors. They feel that whooping them would stop their
chances of becoming friends, future practice partners, or
doubles partners. So, they fold under pressure and let them
win. They believe that folding will get the better kids to like
them. In reality, competitors and coaches are more likely to
invite an athlete into their circles that beat their higher-ranked
athletes handily. This success will quickly gain the approval and
respect of all the higher-ranked players.
Discussion #5: Fear of Success. Athletes’ fake injuries or gift
away winnable matches. Some athletes don’t love the chase as
much as their parents. Hotel life and the everyday pressure are
too much for some personalities. This is an important topic to
discuss when a parent starts to feel like the athlete isn’t making
an effort. Also, some athletes may be afraid of the added
pressures of success. The more they win, the longer they stay.
The more they win, the more the parents want to chase more
significant events. To them, winning means nothing but
trouble. The continuous pressure to always play at such a high
level overwhelms some youngsters.

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The Losers Draw
The role of the back draw plays a vital role in the growth of
your athlete. It provides the necessary exposure to playing
under pressure that tennis players require. Avoiding it is
avoiding the growth they desperately seek. Back draw
participation is essential in the developmental software process
because the athlete is playing while being judged. Your athlete
needs a variety of opponents to develop their complete
hardware and software tool belts.
Booking opponents to play practice matches is getting
increasingly harder. Since most events consist of the main draw
and a back draw, promote to your athletes that these are double
events.
Solution: I recommend renaming the consolation draw the
second tournament. To reframe the event, promote thinking
of the main draw as the bonus tournament and the back draw
as the main event.
Top competitors in the younger division are seeking
approximately 60 tournament matches annually, with an
additional 60 practice matches. The older teens are seeking 100
matches per year with their additional 100 practice matches.
Playing as many “second” tournaments as possible is where
your athletes will find the experience they seek. Every
competitive match is a chance to gain valuable exposure to
performing under pressure. Each competitive opportunity is a
growth experience needed to maximize potential.

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Procrastination
“Hi Frank, this is Carrie from Florida. I read one of your books and
loved it. I'm calling because my son Patrick is having trouble closing out
leads. He gets up 4-1 and stops playing. It is becoming a habit. What is
your first availability to book a zoom session?”
After watching Patrick's match video, I saw that he built a lead
with his attacking style of play only to change to a defensive
retrieving system when it was time to close out the set.
Changing a winning style of play usually ends with catastrophic
results. The question is, why would Patrick stop attacking
within his style of game? Fear is the real root cause of this type
of loss.
What is the better acronym for fear? Is it "Forget Everything and Run"
or "Face Everything and Rise"?
Fear of losing the match causes many athletes to procrastinate
and stop playing to win. Because with the closing-out phase of
the set comes increased stress, and they are not ready to deal
with the pressure. Carrie witnesses Patrick playing a push
mode. After gifting away a couple of careless games, Patrick
mentally "time traveled" to all the times he blew a lead in past
matches. Overwhelmed, he procrastinated and could not
reboot his winning style of tennis until it was too late.
Solution: Defeating fear requires the athlete to buy into their
statistics. For example, when Patrick builds a lead, sees the
finish line, and keeps his foot firmly on the gas, he wins
approximately 70% of his sets. When he sees the finish line and
takes his foot off the gas, he wins approximately 30% of his
sets.

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As I have said, progress stems from exposure, not avoidance.
Athletes should pay attention to how they built the lead, then
apply those concrete steps and repeat those plays and patterns.
This is a solid system for avoiding procrastination and earning
70% wins.

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Cheaters
It’s the match’s first game, and Marcos makes his initial
“creative line call.” David gives him a quick glance but chooses
to be non-confrontational. At 2-2, Marcos calls another ball
out that looks well inside the line. David turns and looks at his
dad but again decides to avoid the drama.
How does this lack of initial confrontation affect the match?
It’s twofold; by not confronting Marcos, David planted the
seed of indecision, which is starting to blossom in his head.
David’s thoughts leave the all-important performance frame of
mind as he keeps drifting back into the contaminating drama.
This lack of correct focus initiates frustration and error after
error. Conversely, it confirms Marco’s suspicions that David is
an easy mark. Later in the match, Marco’s finger will be raised
whenever the line is grazed.”
Solution: It would be wise for David to deal with these
creative line callers firmly and swiftly. Often the first few
“hooks” are simply a test to see if the new opponent is tough
enough to handle face-to-face conflict. I recommend that
David walk slowly up to the net with a strong posture and a
serious facial expression. Place both hands on the net tape and,
with their best “angry eyes,” say, “We’re not going to be doing
this today, are we.” This confrontation isn’t asking; it’s telling.
Most athletes have to rehearse their protocols for dealing with
gamesmanship drama. It would help David if he stood in front
of a mirror and practiced his best “we’re not going to be doing
this” speech.
After the second incident, without saying a word to Marcos,
David should walk out the gate and get a lines-person to assist.

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Peaceful Warrior
Adrian is an anxious kid. Like clockwork, he worries during
every training session and every match. Talking him down “off
the ledge” steals most of our lesson time together.
For these worry warts, the match isn’t played on a 78ft court;
it’s performed on a 6-inch playing field between their two ears.
Athletes like Adrian don’t necessarily lose to their opponents;
they beat themselves by reverting to sabotaging routines.
Choosing to focus on the invented dramas versus the proper
preparation or match performance goals causes Adrian’s losses
very winnable matches.
If your athlete struggles with making tennis more dramatic
than it is, these solutions are for you.
Solution: Remind your athlete that playing tennis requires
them to be a peaceful warrior. Mindset and dialogue influence
their performance. Their inner dialogue either pulls them
towards great results or pushes them away from the results they
desperately want.
Adrian’s constant internal interference contaminates his mind
and stops his desired flow state. A cluttered mind is littered
with too many unwanted thoughts swirling around the brain.
A peaceful warrior prioritizes thoughts, crystallizes goals, and
plays controlled, aggressive tennis.
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144
CHAPTER 13: Self-Coaching

“We Average 50,000 Daily Thoughts And

80% Are Negative.”

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Flipping Negative Inner Dialog
In match play, an athlete’s internal dialog is their self-coaching.
Internal dialog is the conversation their ego is having with
themselves. Their inner dialog is dark when they see
competition in a negative light. Conversely, when they see
“pressure as a privilege,” to quote Billy Jean King, their self-
coaching is more positive, uplifting, and optimistic.
An athlete’s problem-oriented inner dialog sabotages their
performance by interfering with their quiet mind. This quiet
space is essential because it’s where “playing in the zone”
stems. To some athletes, negative inner dialog spirals them into
a self-defeating, under-arousal state. To others, it pushes them
into a panicked, over-arousal state. Both are detrimental to
performance.
Intermediate athletes are known to sabotage their play by
criticizing themselves, worrying about losing, and inventing
post-match catastrophic conclusions during their competition.
Solution: One method of combating the athlete’s negative
self-dialog begins with videotaping tournament matches and
providing non-hitting match play video analysis. Athletes need
to see their performances. Visual learning is powerful.
This process accesses the specific stressful environment that
needs to be studied along with a high-IQ tennis coach. The
following video analysis topics would be wise to dissect and
discuss.
Match Play Video Analysis
 Strokes & Movement Efficiencies & Deficiencies
 Anticipatory Efficiencies & Deficiencies
 Staying on Script (Top 7 Patterns)
 Opponent Profiling
 Between Point & Changeover Rituals & Routines

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  Emotional Control
 Focus Control
 Cause of Errors
 Court Positioning Cause & Effect
 Score Management

Athletes trained to apply match play video analysis are much

more likely to become aware of their solutions in future
competition.

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Rock - Paper - Scissors
Every time we got into my parent’s old wood panel station
wagon, my sister would dive into a rock-paper-scissors war.
The winner got to sit in the front seat, and the loser was
banished to the back seat. It was as if she had ESP- she read
my mind repeatedly.
Solution: Ask your athlete to shift their attention to
developing better self-coaching skills. Here’s a fun and
effective way for them to be solution-oriented. If your athlete
has their A-plan and contingency plans set, they can strategize
the correct system come game day. I recommend starting the
match with their A-plan fully intact. If they’re losing, apply the
“Rock-Paper-Scissors” system.
Here’s the analogy: Like rock beats scissors, so do net rushers
beat pushers. Just like scissors beat paper, so does a pusher
beat a hard hitter. As paper beats rock, and so does a hard hitter
beat a net rusher, which means that for every opponent’s
system, there is an opposing system that is competitively more
difficult. Plugging in the correct system is often the key to
success. Winning is much more likely when our athletes
understand the art of self-coaching.

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Positive Inner Dialog
A method of conquering the athlete's negative inner dialog is
priming solutions. The athlete's inner voice frames their
actions. The National Science Foundation estimates that we
have 50,000 thoughts daily, and 80% of those thoughts are
negative. Trading in a turbulent mental state for a relaxed,
calming, proactive state is necessary for competitive tennis.
Neuro Priming is an essential addition to an athlete's
preparation. Neuro Priming is the science of preprogramming
the athlete's inner trust in their match solutions.
Solution: Assist your athlete as they customize their positive
inner dialog by organizing their physical, mental, and
emotional solutions into audio recordings in their very own
voice. This mental and emotional training system requires a bit
of time as your athlete and coach sit and write out the athlete's
customized solutions to their reoccurring issues. Then the
athlete is asked to record those solutions onto their cell phone's
dictation app.
Listening to one's positive, solution-based audio tapes in their
own words has incredible advantages: it increases tennis IQ,
reprograms old pessimistic beliefs, changes negative behaviors,
speeds up the learning process, increases focus, assists the
athletes in quickly fixing stroke flaws, staying on their script of
patterns, as well as coping with stress, nervousness and the fear
of failure. As you can see, listening to their solutions holds big-
time benefits.
Neuro Priming isn't meant to replace on-court physical
training; its purpose is to enhance it. It's self-coaching at its
best. (Visit #1 Best Seller on Amazon: Neuro Priming for Peak
Performance, Giampaolo).

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Identifying Internal Obstacles
Looking deeper into competitive success brings us to assist
athletes by identifying their internal obstacles. Internal
obstacles cause the most devastating losses. Although losing to
a more experienced player stings a bit, losing to a less
established competitor due to self-destruction is much more
harrowing.
By now, the secret to conquering one’s inner demons stems
from understanding the importance of self-coaching. It is
essential to exchange judgmental tirades with calming routines
and rituals. Overcoming internal obstacles is more satisfying at
a deeper level than beating a top seed.
Solution: Athletes perform best when they are not excessively
judged or overly concerned about the outcome ramifications.
I must say, there are a couple of parental blunders that light the
athlete’s stress up like a rocket. One is bantering about
outcome wishes, ranking wishes, and one-upping their
neighbors. The second is to start tournament days, saying,
“Zoe, you got this; she’s horrible. You shouldn’t even drop a game against
her. You should easily get into the finals on Sunday.”
Fast forward 30 minutes, and Zoe’s down 2-4. Guess who’s
freaking out inside because she’s not meeting her parent’s pre-
match wishes? Outcome goals are fine as long as the focus is
on the process. To continually stay process minded is the
backbone of successful inner dialog. What influences athletes
most in their most challenging moments is their mental
commentary. Terrific parents and coaches preprogram this
commentary. A healthy mindset orchestrates a positive
attitude, belief, and effort. So, what is the competitive success
you and your athlete seek? Competitive success is performing
at one’s peak performance level set after set, the optimum
victory for any athlete.

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Monitoring Outer Dialog
Another method of nurturing a positive inner dialog is to ask
the athlete to monitor their outer dialogue under stressful
conditions. An athlete’s external dialogue includes speech,
body language, eyes, and physical behavior, which are natural
byproducts of an athlete’s internal dialogue. Controlling their
outer dialog serves two critical functions. It not only assists
your athlete in being the predator but also intimidates the
opponent (Think Mike Tyson before a fight) into being the
prey.
Solution: Monitoring this process begins with the athlete
recognizing their automatic behavior system under the
stressful conditions of competition. It is common to default to
old comfortable habits under stress; negative habits perpetuate
pessimistic thought patterns and alert the opponent that self-
destruction is in the works. Self-spotting outer dialog behavior
will help the athlete to recondition their inner dialog chatter.

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Attention Seeking Negative Dialog
A behavior management strategy is to coach athletes to resist
attention-seeking negative dialog and behavior. Athletes gain
sympathy by projecting pessimistic behaviors. A typical
example is an athlete’s excessively loud tantrum in competition
to gain sympathy from spectators, family, or coaches. In
essence, the athlete is projecting, “I’m usually so much better than
this. I must be having a terrible day!” Ironically, the tantrums are an
everyday occurrence.
Solution: In my opinion, ignoring the outbursts and hoping
they will go away is not dialogue management because an
appropriate alternate behavior is needed. Habits are forming,
good and bad. Healthy habits allow for opportunities to find
your athlete. Better effort and a better attitude invite the
exposure of better coaches and players to welcome your athlete
into a better world.
I recommend charting the number of their negative outbursts.
Then ask them to decrease those pessimistic responses in an
upcoming match. Your athlete’s dialogue projects their
thoughts and beliefs. Their outbursts have been programmed
into their subconscious. If this craziness sounds familiar,
reprogramming is needed.
Since their inner dialogue determines their life’s course,
reprogramming their negative internal chatter is a battle worth
fighting. Optimistic self-coaching is a beautiful technique to
create better human beings on and off the tennis court.

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Contaminating Thoughts
Every athlete has to tame their inner demons if they’re to beat
top opponents. It doesn’t matter who’s across the net if the
athletes’ inner demons sabotage their performance.
Contaminating thoughts are ego-related notions like:
“I have to win,” “What’s my rating going to drop to if I lose,” “I’m going
to blow it again,” or “I can’t do this!”
Teach your athlete to complete without constant interference
from the contaminating ego part of their mind. Quieting the
habit of negative inner chatter requires replacing it with a new
positive inner voice.
Solution: Developing the mental game isn’t as hard as you
think. Ask your athlete about their inner dialog. Is it
pessimistic, hurtful, insulting, or simply nonjudgmental
observations? Competing in one’s peak performance state of
mind requires the competitor to pay attention to their self-talk.
Then it’s their job to train their inner dialog to replace
bantering about the problem with plugging in the solution.
When their pessimistic, judgmental voice is in control, peak
performance will not arrive. Playing in a “play state” is when
they play without editing. Ask them to play without all their
editing and self-judgment. Just trust their training and enjoy
competing without focusing too much on their shortcomings.
Here’s a question for the parents: Do you breathe, walk, talk,
ride a bike, or drive your car without conscious effort or do
you condemn each micro mistake? This state of mind is what
your athlete needs in the heat of battle. It’s that automatic pilot
performance you seek. The negative inner voice often keeps
athletes from unlocking their true potential.
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154
CHAPTER 14: Getting Good Versus Earning Good

“Learn To Die A Little.”

155
Getting Good Versus Earning Good
Being a natural athlete only gets you so far in high-performance
competition. Juniors with big-time athleticism but little work
ethic, focus ability, and dedication rarely progresses into the
advanced levels. Does your athlete possess disciplined weekly
routines? Success in competition is more of a product of
mental and emotional disciplines rather than sheer athletic skill.
The reason why athletes stall their progressions is that most
like to do only what comes easy.
Solution: You don’t get good; you earn good. The first step in
becoming extraordinary depends on what your child is doing
with their ordinary days. All we have is now.
Ask them to make every day count. Be organized and
disciplined. Self-improvement requires goal setting. Seek out
performance goals and ranking/rating goals. Earning “good”
begins with knowing their destination and applying a daily,
weekly, and monthly plan.
Solution: You don’t get good. You earn good. The first step
in becoming extraordinary depends on what your child is doing
with their ordinary days. All we have is now.
Ask them to make every day count. Be organized and
disciplined. Self-improvement requires goal setting. Seek out
performance goals and ranking/rating goals. Earning good
begins with knowing their destination and applying a daily,
weekly, and monthly plan.

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Replacement Thoughts
Neil is a lucky kid from New Zealand. His Dad flies for United,
so he gets buddy passes to LAX to work with me on his tennis
skills. Being physically talented is a blessing, but most athletes
hit a wall around the 9.0 UTR level. The lack of software
(mental and emotional) training catches up with them, and
drama follows. Let’s peek into my training session with Neil.
Frank: “Neil, you’ve got a terrific motion in your serve. But you say you
don’t like serving. Why?”
Neil: “I don’t know; I can’t hold in my matches. My tennis coaches work
with me on the pinpoint stance, then the platform stance, different tosses,
and keeping my 3rd link up. Maybe I’m overthinking. I can nail it in
practice, but I get broken all the time in matches.”
Frank: “What’s your thought process before you serve in real matches?
Walk me through it.”
Neil: “In-between points, I remind myself to point my feet, get my grip
over, palm down on the backswing, knee bend, and tuck my left hand in
after the ball toss.”
Solution: In tournament competition, ask your youngster to
shift focus away from their “how,” which is their mechanics,
to the “where & why.” Shifting to strategic thoughts is the easy
fix for Neil. It is great that Neil has mechanical reminders, but
I asked Neil to forget about them in matches. Neil’s eyes
opened wide. I said you’ve got that; now leave those thoughts
on the practice court. I then asked him to instead, commit to
memory five match play strategic thoughts. Here is what I
asked him to consider:
1) What is the score?
2) What are the opponent’s strengths & weaknesses?
3) What’s the opponent’s position & probable return?
4) What is his highest percentage play?

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 5) What’s his first strike after the serve?

He began holding serve by freeing himself from his mechanics

and plugging in between-point plans. Neil’s father emailed to
say thanks and that Neil went on a crazy winning streak
breaking into the 11.0 UTR scene.

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Attention to Details
By now, you know that your athlete’s hardware skills
(strokes/athleticism) are applied during points, and their
software skills (mental/emotional) are applied between those
points. In-between points and during changeovers are when
the mentally tough competitors observe, reflect, and adapt.
Intermediate athletes typically skip over their between-point
and changeover routines because they can’t yet grasp the value
of mental and emotional fortitude in competition. So, they
react to the match instead of taking a proactive approach.
Your job as parents is to discuss paying attention and picking
up on cues that pass by intermediate players. Remind your
athletes to use the allotted time between points to determine
why points were won or lost. These include the opponent’s
strengths and weaknesses, frustrations, and satisfactions.
Solution: Teach your athlete that both their hardware (strokes
and athleticism) and software (mental and emotional) are
essential in high-performance tennis. Remind them that
hardware skills are used during the point, and software skills
are applied in-between points. Often if your athlete has
competed for years without software, you’ll be breaking old,
comfortable, yet poor habits.
For example, leading into a tiebreaker, would paying attention
to the fact that the opponent committed 22 backhand errors
and five forehand errors be meaningful?
Thinking while playing may be uncomfortable at first, so
expect resistance. This skill of paying attention to detail will
definitely put more “W’s” in the win column.

159
Defeat Stimulates Growth
Athletes must experience hundreds of matches before they are
expected to have their preset protocols organized to win at the
higher levels.
Something constructive comes from every defeat if your
athlete is trained to see tournament play as a simple
information-gathering mission.
Seeing competition through a more compassionate lens will
change early failure into achievement. We must push past
defeat and learn from it. Here’s some advice to help you and
your athlete accept and even grow from defeat.
Solution: Every defeat, every heartbreak, and every loss
contains its seeds of improvement. It’s best to use the match
data as fuel to improve physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Use defeat to identify the holes in your athlete’s game and
organize next week’s deliberate, customized action plan.
It’s wise to remind your athletes that being defeated is better
than not attempting at all. A tennis match is an opportunity to
take a shot at hitting specific performance goals. It takes guts
to lay it on the line each weekend. Please help them to
remember that it’s a privilege to be able to be in this position.
Only through experiencing both success and defeat will
athletes grow, and only through growth can they actually earn
success in the higher levels of our sport.

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Learn to Die
Some athletes needlessly suffer in matches because they play
the same role over and over again. For example, John plays
aggressively to build a lead, only to play scared and gift away
another match. After building a nice lead, John routinely
exchanges his attacking game for a “safe” system which
routinely ends badly. John holds onto this losing match
behavior because he thinks it offers safety and security. In
reality, it stunts the growth (and the wins) that he desperately
wants.
Solution: The old saying, “Learning to die is to be liberated
from death.” In our world of high-performance tennis, athletes
would be wise to “die” a little or lose 33% of the time to win
the match. You see, they’re allowed to miss some on their way
to a fearless victory. Winning 66% or two out of three points
is a winning percentage.
If your athlete wants to liberate themselves, remember the skill
of dying a little, which will translate to more wins and fewer
defeats.

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Maximizing Progress
Maximizing progress often requires the team to dismantle and
reassemble the four Pillars of the athlete’s game (strokes,
athleticism, mental, emotional), essentially rebuilding their
confidence and reigniting their belief systems.
All too often, athletes go on weekly groundstroke grind mode
and then, each weekend at events, crumble in competitive
pressure. The following six solutions will do the trick if your
athlete is ready for an overhaul.
Solution: Those athletes who groove their fundamentals
religiously and rarely get the results their capable of getting
share the following failures:
 Not training the essential serving and returning + 1
patterns.
 Not training for a violent game of keep away.
 Too little time preparing the mental & emotional tools.
 Not training the 2nd & 3rd performances.
 Not enough adversity training: repetition of
competitive sets.
 Not Training 30-40% of their time developing world-
class athleticism.
 Practicing with outcome wants versus growth needs.

Plan on making training uncomfortable, then design ways to

handle the discomfort.

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Dealing with Adversity
When it comes to competitive tennis, there’s a balance between
winning and losing. The winning percentage I’ve always looked
for was winning approximately 70% of the athlete’s matches
per tournament. If your athlete wins under 50% of their
matches, it may be possible you are playing them at too high
of a level. If they win over 70% of their matches, they may be
playing too low of a level.
Balancing wins and losses is important because you are
managing emotions. These emotions drive confidence. Losing
too often is destructive. Winning too often destroys the
hardships that provide growth.
Another important topic is managing the fun. After all, when
the fun stops, it usually means trouble. Keep it fun, and keep
your athletes progressing.
Solution: Every athlete pursuing high-performance tennis will
face adversity. They’ll need resilience in the face of misfortune.
With your guidance, they’ll hopefully have the correct amount
of success and failure to motivate them to forge through all the
different levels of competitive tennis. However, hardships are
part of the learning curve, and though failing can seem
devastating to some perfectionists, it helps athletes develop.
For the real competitors, it boosts their sense of determination
and is seen as an opportunity to grow.
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163
164
CHAPTER 15: Emotional Toughness

“Where Their Emotion Go … Their Energy

Flows.”

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The Emotional Questionnaire
During the past year, I had some of the top tennis players in
Southern California complete an informal questionnaire.
Athletes checked off emotions they routinely feel in competing
in a singular match. The sheer number of emotions was
astonishing. It confirms why emotional intelligence plays a
crucial role in handling competitive pressure. I didn’t realize
junior competitors’ wide range of emotions during a tennis
match. Here are some of the most common:
Fulfilled, Confused, Suspicious, Irritated, Elated, Confident,
Agitated, Triumphant, Harassed, Energized, Determined,
Powerful, Angry, Furious, Scared, Disappointing, Envious,
Cautious, Pessimistic Horrified, Resentful, Bitter,
Embarrassed, Guilty, Ashamed, Bored, Secure, Trusting,
Friendly, Relaxed, Carefree, Content, Resentful, Responsible,
Happy, Renewed, Regenerated, Proud, Cooperative,
Optimistic, Satisfied, and Delighted.
With such a wide range of intense feelings, it’s no wonder that
mental and emotional development is becoming in vogue.
Let’s examine why parents must assist their athletes in
managing the fire and ice of emotions under stress.
Solution: Emotion has a massive influence on the cognitive
processes of your athlete. Emotions can skew their perception
of what’s truly happening. The saying is: “Where their emotions
go…their energy flows.”
Emotions play tug of war with their attention as it pushes them
towards and then away from the reality of the moment.
Emotions running the show can stunt their ability to remember
accurately, which hurts their decision-making, reasoning, and
problem-solving skills. Emotions escalate positive and negative
thoughts and behaviors. Athletes experience emotions

166
differently and then behave in response to the emotions in a
unique fashion.
Discuss the above list of emotions with your athlete. Ask them
which emotions calm them and which ones cause havoc during
competition -plan on teaching your athlete how to regulate
those negative feelings in match play.

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Where Attention Goes … Energy Flow
The mind creates deeply engrained pathways that
instantaneously cultivate solutions or complications to similar
situations. This law of attraction either hyper-focuses your
athletes at crunch time or completely derails them when it
matters most.
So, what mental habits are your athletes forming? Some
athletes with a short fuse have trained themselves to default
instantly to frustration first. Once behaviors become automatic
routines, athletes perform those actions repeatedly without
being mentally aware of the conduct. The acronym is ANTS
(Automatic Negative Thoughts.)
So, how do we help our athletes recognize the hidden factors
that influence their behavior?
Solution: If their negative energy is winning the power
struggle, here are seven ways for them to lessen pessimism.
Decreasing ANTS by:
1) Not Assuming the Worst Will Happen
2) Avoiding the Words: Never and Always
3) Recognizing Distorted Thoughts and Feelings
4) Take a Bathroom Break to Reenergize
5) Let Go of Past Mistakes
6) Refocus on Exposing Your Strengths
7) Flip Your Attitude to Gratitude

Kill the ants (Automatic Negative Thoughts) in their Brain.

Athletes often win or lose in their minds before they win or
lose in reality. Where attention goes … energy flow is a
tremendous mantra for any athlete struggling against
themselves in the heat of battle.

168
Experience Matters
Has your athlete gained practical knowledge from years of
participation in high-performance tournament play? Have they
personally lived through the wars of junior tennis?
Competition is fierce, and experience is necessary. In reality,
winning a few big events a year is impressive for any top
athlete. Losses often happen, so parents and athletes must
build the resiliency to bounce back quickly.
After a main draw loss, you’ll have to be calm enough to
discuss performance goals achieved and missed. The ability to
learn from the experience is vital. A parent is the likely
“weekend coach,” so they often need to assist in designing a
solid performance plan to compete in the consolation draw
within an hour. Each main draw and back draw match is
important because closing-out multiple matches daily is a
competitive skill that must be developed.
Solution: A wise parent is always looking for improvements
versus only winning outcomes. You’ll need to use junior
tournaments as information-gathering missions versus a life-
or-death crisis. They are learning from mistakes and losses.
When your athlete loses, it only means there are still lessons to
learn. The tournament’s consolation draw is an important
learning tool and should be used with pride.
I recommend asking your athlete for three successes and three
improvements. What did they do well, and what can they do
better next match? It’s your job to leave the drama to the less
intelligent families.

169
Nurture the Warrior Mentality
Top athletes are warriors in their respective fields. Warriors
aren’t born; they are developed. A competitive warrior is sure
of their abilities and future success. In the warrior’s minds, they
know they won’t win every battle but will win the war. To
them, there’s no question they’ll reach their long-term goal.
From the parent’s side, appropriate modeling behaviors are
essential. How you, the parent, navigate the correct behavior is
one of the most critical influencers of your child’s actions.
They are watching and learning from you every day. Please
don’t expect your child’s tennis coach to teach the below
warrior traits. Only the very best in the business do so.
Solution: These Warrior Traits are yours to teach to your
athlete:
 Be An Independent Problem Solver
 Stand Up to Confrontation
 Be Courageous at Crunch Time
 Trust Your Quick Thinking
 Don’t Ever Give Up
 Resistance to Gamesmanship
 Don’t Be Scared of Anyone
 Be Self-Disciplined
 Have High Morals and Strong Work Ethics
 Embraces Fear and Uncertainty
 Set Realistic Goals and Track Your Progress
 Never Stop Seeking Improvements
 Nurture Confidence and Inner Belief

The “Warrior Mindset” is all about not settling for mediocrity.

Promote psychological and physical skills that will allow the
athlete to reach their full potential.

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Teaching Emotional Health
Coaches typically teach physical health, but who is teaching
emotional health? It’s a given that a physically healthy athlete
is needed to pursue high-performance sports. Athleticism and
a solid tool belt of strokes are the hardware required to play
the game. But the software’s needed actually to win the game.
Mental health is the ability to think, understand self-awareness,
opponent awareness, and generally make good decisions in
competitive play. The key to the mental game is having the
level-headedness to hit the shot the moment demands.
Emotional health is the ability to manage emotions under
stress. This involves mastering performance anxieties common
to the game.
The most common cause of our athlete’s painful losses is due
to emotional self-destruction. It is often easier to blame a loss
on poor mechanics and sloppy footwork, but performance
anxiety is the most painful cause of a loss to accept.
To the uneducated tennis parent, this means there’s something
broken deep inside our child, and it’s likely our fault. I’m here
to tell you that they are not broken; they are normal. It just
takes digging deeper to find solutions to emotional problems.
Here’s a start.
Solutions:
 Emotional healthy athletes have parents who identify
the true causes of their losses. They observe
competition and listen to their children. In quiet
moments, such as before bed, the real cause of a loss
is found in the athlete’s words, facial expressions, and
body language.
 Tennis coaches typically teach the hardware and don’t
attend tennis matches. So, it’s the parent’s job to

171
 understand the common performance anxieties found
in competition. These include fear, nervousness,
choking, panicking, loss of focus, and inability to close
out leads.
• Parents should teach athletes that their thoughts and
feelings aren’t always reality. Emotional speculations
shouldn’t control the athlete; the athlete should control
them.
 Parents want their athletes to perform the way they’d
love to perform. We get annoyed when our children
don’t mirror our self-image. After all, they should be
perfect because they came from our gene pool.

The core of most emotional issues stems from the athlete

thinking that their outcome goals matter more than their
performance goals. As any good coach will tell you, the ability
to control one’s performance under pressure secures the
outcome goals we all seek.

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Performance Anxiety
Performance anxiety affects every competitive athlete at one
time or another. Without proper understanding, it crushes
enjoyment, causes devastating losses, and destroys self-
confidence. Your athlete’s anxiety symptoms may include a
racing heart rate, rapid but shallow breathing, dry mouth,
trembling hands, nausea, and blurred vision.
Reduce your athlete’s anxiety by helping them practice in the
manner they’re expected to perform. Prepare them properly
for long tournament days of pressure by reminding them to
focus on what could go right. As your athlete confronts their
fears and learns ways to handle the below common stressors,
they’ll develop resistance. Resiliency comes from facing fears.
As I’ve mentioned, they need exposure, not avoidance.
Solution: Discuss how managing common performance
anxieties pays off. These common performance anxieties
include:
 Fear
 Nervousness
 Choking
 Panicking
 Tanking
 Overcoming Lapses and Concentration
 Self-Doubt
 Self-Condemnation.

Start by asking your athlete to describe their description of

these topics. Then ask them to Google any topic that relates to
them. Next, ask them to YouTube those topics to better
understand how common they are in sports and life. Lastly, ask
them to write a brief paragraph describing the issue and their
very own plan to conquer the anxiety.

173
Red Flags
A red flag is a signal that goes off when something’s not quite
right. A commonality in sports is when the students’ words
often don’t match their actions. Their words say, “I want to be a
professional athlete,” and their actions say, “I don’t want to actually
work for it.”
If your athlete brings internal drama and is unpleasant and
frightening to be around on match days, the family is in for a
world of uncommon hurt.
Solution: Here are a dozen red flags we do not see in the top
competitors. Be honest as you read the list of common
stumbling blocks. Do any sound too familiar?
1) Inconsistency in effort
2) Entitlement issues
3) Inappropriate anger issues
4) Lazy choices/poor decisions
5) Avoids solo training
6) Negative attitude
7) Faulty nutrition habits
8) Poor sleep habits
9) Substandard time management
10) Lack of gratitude
11) Second-rate preparation
12) Chooses mediocrity

An age-old saying provides insight: "There are contenders and

pretenders." Which do you have?
If you have a pretender, it may be in everyone’s best interest to
put an end to the weekend drama’s and enjoy a normal life with
a normal child.
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174
CHAPTER 16: Staring Down Fear

“Run Towards the Fire”

175
Self-Sabotage
Self-sabotage is an “inside job.” If your athlete is their own
worst enemy in competition, the issue likely lies in the
relationship between your athlete’s conscious and
subconscious mind. The conscious mind is the analytical,
neurotic part of each athlete’s personality. It wants to help so
badly that it causes problems. The issues occur because the
conscious mind is constantly editing and evaluating every
aspect of the performance. It is rarely possible to get into the
zone and stay in that flow state if the athlete is editing too much
during competition. You see, great competitors apply effortless
effort. Meaning they’re putting out effort without the worry.
The subconscious mind is easygoing. It trusts the fact that it
has performed these routines thousands of times. It’s the
automatic pilot relaxed performer. Gifted athletes choke and
panic at the most inopportune times because their conscious
mind is overthinking and worrying about the possibility of
future failure. This catastrophic way of thinking becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stressing out about the possibility of future failure causes
dopamine and adrenaline to flood the body systems as fear and
muscle tension take center stage. Too many of these released
hormones hijack an athlete’s brain.
Solution: Remind your athlete that it’s a privilege to be able to
play tennis. Worrying about the outcome brings unwanted
visitors through the conscious judgmental mind. Ask your
athlete to observe their performance and make adjustments
without judging. Before competition, preset solutions to
possible future problems. Accepting an excellent performance
versus a perfect performance is a great start to distressing an
athlete. Great performances are born in inner silence.

176
Handling Fear
Here’s an important question: Is your athlete running towards
winning or away from losing? During crunch time, when
closing out matches occurs, athletes either run into the fire or
run away from it. This behavior is psychology 101 - the fight,
flight, or freeze response. It’s the physiological reaction that
occurs in reply to a perceived threat. Everyone has issues with
fearful events; however, some are taught how to handle those
moments, and some are not.
Many athletes struggle with an overactive fight-or-flight
response, typically due to avoidance of pressure. By
understanding why they have this response and how to manage
it, you can help them manage fear healthily.
Solution: I spend most days with fearful, high-performance
athletes.
Here’s what I recommend:
Stop being fearful about what people think. It’s none of your
athlete’s business anyway. Worrying about other people’s
opinions regarding match results has no value. Most athletes
choose the comfort of simply hitting during practice instead of
playing matches and closing out sets, and avoiding what they
need most in practice. When playing practice sets, I highly
recommend trading in the typical 30-minute rally, playing one
set, and going home with the following approach.
I ask the athletes to start their sets at 2-2 with a 5-minute warm-
up. Within the same hour, they can close out three sets and get
the exposure they need to run toward winning. If time is an
issue, start every game at 30-30. Exposure to those big
moments is key. Running towards winning (play to win) versus
running away from losing (playing not to lose) is essential.

177
The Fault Finder
Sadly, most parents think they are helping after losses as they
discuss the athlete’s laundry list of faults. Feeding the monster,
or as we call it, the Inner Critic, is the last thing you want to
do.
Your job as the parent is to foster the belief in their ability over
being the fault finder. As you intuitively know, an external and
internal battle rages in competition. Your youngster is not just
battling the opponent and trying desperately to please you but
also fighting a conflict within their head. If you are counting
folks, that’s three wars raging simultaneously inside their
underdeveloped brain.
Defeating the inner critic is the conflict inside the conflict. I
hear a common statement from parents every weekend: “The
opponent didn’t beat them … my kid beat themselves!” This statement
implies their inner critic got the best of them once again.
How do we, parents and coaches, convince athletes that they
will perform better if they tone down the attack from their own
judgmental minds?
Solution: On match days, please remember it’s your job as the
parent to avoid adding outcome-oriented, contaminating
thoughts. (Your kid already knows you want them to win).
Stick to performance-based dialogue with a relaxed demeanor
and a chill tone of voice. Solutions to defeating their inner critic
require calming, confidence-building dialogue that will help rid
their mind of the typical outcome of “What If” worries.
This inner stability happens before your athlete is ready for the
higher levels of the sport. Defeating the athlete’s inner critic
requires the fault finder to stay silent and the loving parent to
appear.

178
Staring Down Fear
Educate your athletes from day one to incorporate a mental
and emotional “no fear” mindset to match play. The mentality
is that they’re not scared of missing the correct shot the
moment demands, losing matches, or looking bad in front of
their peers. Junior tennis tournaments are just extended
practice sessions. The fear of losing over the need to improve
will limit future potential. It’s the effort we seek, not the
outcomes.
Parents who nurture a growth mindset develop athletes who
will perform at their peak performance level later when it
matters most.
Solution: Keep your athlete focused on the end game versus
the need to win now in the juniors. Typically, young athletes
find success early by retrieving and getting passed up in their
early teens by the athletes that developed their tool belt of
secondary strokes. Young athletes who choose to develop all
the tools in their tool belts will become more complete athletes
and learn to dismantle one-dimensional players. As you know,
developing the complete hardware and software in their tool
belt takes years. You, as parents, have to pick which
developmental pathway is right for you because they typically
can’t do both, beat the pushers in the younger divisions now,
and thrive later.
If college ball is in their long-term plans, focus on developing
their arsenal of primary and secondary stroke weapons, time-
tested speed, agility, weight training, and mental and emotional
muscles. Parents need to share the burden until the athlete is
capable of shouldering the responsibility. Accountability is a
great life lesson I highly recommend.

179
Run Toward the Fire
Tennis players that rise to the occasion in those pressure-
packed finals have courage and confidence in themselves and
their training. These athletes tackle problems head-on and
cope with the hardships of the sport in an unstressed fashion.
Developing mental and emotional strength is essential for
long-term tennis goals. Share with your athlete this analogy.
Ask them to think of themselves as a firefighter. Firefighters
walk into the fire versus running away from it. Regarding your
athlete's fears, I recommend asking them to do the same. It's
human nature to avoid scary situations, so you'll have to show
your athlete how to face fears. If your child avoids difficult
moments like closing out a set versus a better player, they'll
crumble in those moments unless they are trained to regulate
their emotional state. Does this require exposure to the stressor
or avoidance?
Solution: Athletes who thrive under pressure replace their
mechanical thoughts like how they are hitting their forehand,
backhand, serve and volley with focusing on emotional
essentials such as managing momentum, maintaining intensity,
focusing on the here and now, and retaining their positive
mindset.
While solid strokes get the athlete into the events, the
additional software skills enable them to hold up another
trophy.

180
Operating Under Pressure
Handling pressure is a crucial component found in the
software skill set. Competing well under stressful match
conditions is a learned skill. Performing at a higher level
requires the athlete to raise their preparation standards.
Athletes know they “should” prepare smarter, but nearly all
don’t. Most juniors keep repeating their same tired training
routines week in and week out and expect different results.
Your athlete would be wise to exchange their thoughts: “I
should commit to a new training regimen” with “I am committing to a
new training regimen.”
Once the relative weight of importance shifts from their results
to committing to better preparation, they’ll soon be thriving
under pressure. If your athlete wilts under game-day stress,
here are a few tips to get them on a better path.
Solution: First, re-labeling pressure as an opportunity. It’s an
honor to be in the later rounds of events. Those heated
moments are why your athletes train. They need pressure-
packed opportunities to see if their skill sets can rise to the
challenge. So, instead of shying away from unwanted pressure,
athletes must embrace it to maximize their potential.
Exposing your athlete to pressure instead of avoidance is
essential. Keep in mind that their training pathway is
customized to their unique needs. Expose their uncomfortable
pressure triggers and ask your athlete’s coach to dive into them
head first.
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181
182
17 CHAPTER: Anticipation

“Choose To Disconnect on an
Emotional Level.”

183
Rudimentary Anticipation
Anticipatory speed is one of the mental components that we
need to teach much earlier. Anticipation is linked to cause and
effect. It is based on the understanding that each shot hit in a
match has finite responses from the opponent across the net.
Experience gives athletes feedback, and the athletes who pay
attention mentally log those responses. The mentally tough
players log their winning and losing trends into their memory,
which they use to anticipate where the ball will likely be in the
future.
The more matches your athlete plays, the more they can apply
subconscious programming. Because there are only
milliseconds between shots in tennis, our athletes need
recognition by intuition. There isn’t sufficient time to analyze
the situation and set the proper shot selections and motor
programs into play. Athletes build memory logs of data and
feedback. Once the experience of going through similar events
takes place, anticipation is applied.
Solution: Parents and coaches would be wise to start to
develop their young athlete’s anticipatory skills at an early age
with this rudimentary three-step process. (Examples are
assuming both athletes are right-handed)
 Returning Serves: Be mindful of the opponent’s ball
toss. When they toss out in front to the right, the serve
is most likely to go to your athlete’s right, which is their
forehand. If the opponent tosses back over their head,
to their left, it’s most likely going to your athlete’s
backhand.
 Rallies: Pay close attention to the opponent’s strike
zone. A waste-level ball is typically hit with an offensive
drive. A low, sock-level strike zone is often a slice reply.
A head-level strike zone stroke usually falls short.

184
  Volleys: Be aware that a high, shoulder-level volley is
typically hit with pace and cross-court. An opponent’s
low volley is usually a drop volley.
 Identify Offensive, Neutral and Defensive Situations:
Opponents who commit fewer unforced errors play
high-percentage tennis. They do this by understanding
zonal tennis and attempting to hit the shot the moment
demands.

Once these foundational anticipatory clues are established, ask

your athlete to log match clues between point routines and
changeover rituals.

185
The Secret of Pattern Recognition
Bill thinks he’s pretty good. He has the club pro feed him balls
weekly, polishing up his strokes. He grooves with the other
3.5-level guys in the Thursday night men’s clinic and hits the
gym a few times a week. Bill is now at a charity tennis event.
He stands to receive serve against a world-class ATP
Professional. Even though he’s been playing for decades, to
him, returning a 130mph serve seems impossible. Decision-
making abilities at that speed appear to be superhuman.
At the professional level, the receiver has milliseconds to
decide how they will return a 130 mph serve. The truth is that
experienced professional athletes have an extensive database
stored in their subconscious minds of past opponents’ specific
types of deliveries. They’ve played thousands of points, and
their brain picks up patterns of successful and unsuccessful
choices.
Solution: What makes tennis professionals exceptional is that
they’ve seen thousands of 130 mph serves, thousands of
points, and hundreds upon hundreds of matches. After so
much experience in live-ball point play, they can chunk
patterns. Chunking is the term for seeing individual patterns,
which are the opponent’s most likely stroke options and
pattern probabilities.
The secret expertise that only comes from live-ball point play
is recognition. Recognition leads to chunking data into the
subconscious and later applied through intuition. It is the same
in almost every field; past experiences lead to quicker
recognition of high-percentage replies and options. So, if
you’re looking to help your athlete improve their mental game,
replace grooving strokes with live-ball decision-making
exercises and match play.

186
Cognitive Ease
As humans, the more we see, feel or repeat something, the
more we view it as correct. By repeating anything over and
over, it gets easier to accept. Being familiar feels good, even
when it isn’t good for maximizing tennis potential at the
quickest rate. A teaching myth dispelled decades ago was the
saying, “Practice makes perfect.” Now we know that practice
doesn’t necessarily make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
For example, Mr. Jeffry books the club’s ball machine weekly.
He unknowingly solidifies his biomechanically flawed
backhand over and over again. While Mr. Jeffry is getting a
cardio workout, his practice is not correcting the defect. It is
systematically ingraining the deficient backhand. To him, what
he repeats feels like an improvement. As some readers know,
repetition, even bad reps, starts to feel comfortable. It’s
cognitive ease.
Solution: So, what stunts cognitive ease? It’s tackling anything
unknown. This threat causes cognitive (mental) strain. Athletes
looking to improve need this uncomfortable strain. Practicing
what you’ve not already mastered is essential for growth. As
I’ve mentioned, it is exposure to improving the weakness, not
avoiding the weakness, that matters.

187
Emotional Detachment
Emotional detachment is a choice. Choosing to disconnect on
an emotional level helps protect the athlete from unwanted
drama, anxiety, and stress. It’s their preset unwillingness to get
drawn into a negative tournament mindset. Teach them that
staying away from everyday stressors like looking up future
opponents’ UTR ratings and speculating about the outcome, is
a decision to detach from a pessimistic mindset.
Emotionally disconnecting helps protect the athlete’s
optimistic, solution-based mindset. The best way for parents
and athletes to thrive in the junior tennis world is by
emotionally detaching from the competitive race - letting go of
rankings and ratings. Emotional detachment helps us
remember that happiness is tied to meeting performance goals,
not outcome goals. Tournaments offer feedback through
growth opportunities. Meeting those new opportunities head-
on with new skills is what athletes need.
Solution: Being detached doesn’t mean you don’t care. It
means you’re committed to focusing on the physical, mental,
and emotional effort versus outcome narratives.
Acknowledging the problem with detachment from emotions
is not the same as giving up or denying it exists. It’s a way of
protecting ourselves from what doesn’t help performance.
Being committed to emotional detachment helps the team stay
in the moment and away from the pointless drama that
shadows junior tennis events.

188
Modern Intelligence
High-performance tennis success stems from the ability to pay
attention to and respond to match dynamics. The same holds
true for intelligence. Smart used to be one’s ability to memorize
information. Nowadays, everyone has this covered. Athletes
with cell phones have instant access to all the information they
desire.
Modern intelligence now comes in the form of mental and
emotional warfare. Does your athlete have the following
mental tools developed in their tool belt?
Solution: Modern intelligence is:
 Situational Awareness
 Filtering Information
 Troubleshooting Ability
 Clarity of Goals
 Preset Protocols to Handle Problems
 Having Multiple Game Plans
 Ability to Identify Inefficient Training Protocols

The good news is that modern intelligence is a choice and skill

worth developing.
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189
190
18 CHAPTER: Anticipating Success

“To Become the Best … You Need a Different

Approach Than the Rest.”

191
Training Anticipation
Competitive tennis is a violent game of keep away, not catch.
Plan on each match being a 2-hour dog fight and plan on
multiple matches daily on tournament days.
Yes, your athlete’s legs and lungs need to be at their peak
performance level but preparing your athlete includes more
than cardio endurance, speed, and agility. Factor into the
equation anticipatory speed. This hidden skill set holds many
benefits. Anticipation assists your athlete with their ability to
quickly and accurately predict the outcome of actions even
before that action occurs.
Roger Federer rarely appears hurried when executing strokes.
The high-speed film confirms that he reacts and moves earlier
than most competitors. His ability to apply agility and stability
with his body and head through the strike zone is legendary.
His early detection is essential for delivering and receiving on
the run. So, how do top players like Federer do it?
Solution: Professionals acquire knowledge of their opponent’s
favorite sequence of shots in particular circumstances. Athletes
at the higher level all have preferred options of plays and
patterns. They use pre-match video analysis and scouting
reports to predict performance. If your athlete is preparing to
play in the high-performance arena, I suggest uncovering ways
to develop this incredible, secret skill set of predicting
possibilities.
When my daughter played her first 14’s finals in the Hard Courts in
Georgia, six fathers of her competitors videotaped her performance as a
future scouting report. Yes, acquiring knowledge about opponents starts
early.

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Set Them Up for Success
Most athletes miss opportunity because it wasn’t preceded by
intelligent preparation. Before every incredible performance,
there must be countless hours of physical, mental, and
emotional preparation.
The school methodology of tennis training is similar to having
your children attend math, science, English, and history
throughout the weekdays in school. The athlete and their
parents need to plan on working harder and suffering more
than the competition.
Plan on starting earlier each day than your competition and
ending later each night than the competition. Building a master
plan in any field takes a deliberate blueprint. Following is a
sample blueprint.
 Tennis Specific Speed, Agility, Stamina Training - 3
Hrs. A Week
 Off-Court Strength Training - 3 Hrs. A Week
 Primary Stroke Repetition - 3 Hrs. A Week
 Secondary Strokes Development - 3 Hrs. A Week
 Pattern Development & Repetition - 3 Hrs. A Week
 Practice Matches - 6 Hrs. A Week
 Match Video Analysis (Spotting Anomalies) - 1 Hrs. A
Week
 Mental Rehearsals -Train the Mind/Body Connection
- 30 Min A Week

The school methodology of tennis training is similar to having

your children attend math, science, English, and history
throughout the weekdays in school. The athlete and their
parents need to plan on working harder and suffering more
than the competition.

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Plan on starting earlier each day than your competition and
ending later each night than the competition. Building a master
plan in any field takes a deliberate blueprint. Following is a
sample blueprint.
Solution: Hard work compounds like interest; the earlier they
plug in their customized developmental plan, the more it pays
off. Parents, you are responsible for a young tennis player's
preparation. Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
Tennis is one of the only sports where the coach works with
the athlete during the week and doesn't attend the competition
come game day. Parents must either take the leadership role as
the “weekend coach,” preparing the athlete correctly for
pressure, or hire the athlete's coach to attend the tournament
matches. Champions sacrifice, and the parents of champions
sacrifice – it is that simple.

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Mental Rehearsals
Mental rehearsals do not replace an athlete’s on-court tennis
training. It is an essential enhancement. Just as priming muscles
before competition increases athleticism, mental rehearsals
increase cognitive processing speed. Neuroscientists report that
mental rehearsal activates a network of neural-coded motor programs in
the brain that, when primed, trigger the athlete’s correct physiological
responses.
Why do mental rehearsals work? Mental rehearsal is a form of
preventative medicine. Athletes with pre-set plans have
superior confidence in their problem-solving ability.
Solution: Mental rehearsals lead to match time visualization.
These are extremely powerful tools that athletes can apply to
improve match performance. Here are some examples of how
to best utilize visualization:
 Mentally rehearse your best patterns of play nightly as
you fall asleep. This pre-programming of the mind
works when the conscious mind shuts off and the
subconscious mind awakens.
 Mentally rehearse your plans and contingency plans
before competition.
 Visualize how you want to construct the point right
before every point starts.
 Mentally rehearse potential dramas and how you would
respond to each one.

As they strengthen their “mental muscle,” they improve the

speed and quality of the motor programs they send through
the nervous system to recruit muscles. By consistently
rehearsing their solutions to common problems, their heart
rate lowers, and their response time and match decisions
improve.

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Parental Behavior
At an awards banquet during the 2012 Australian Open, a
Chinese coach asked me, "So, where should we look to find our next
champion?" an Australian coach leaned over and added, "I'll tell
you where I'd look, Mate - an orphanage!"
If your athlete isn't enjoying the competition, it's time to find
out why. Is it the coaches, the academy, or you, the parents,
failing your athlete? While this chapter focuses on anticipating
success, it is wise to anticipate possible failures and the causes
of those losses.
Solution: You know you're a crazy tennis parent if …
1) Someone asks your child a question, and you answer
instead.
2) You "Helicopter" over your athlete and do everything
for them.
3) You preach only results matter before matches.
4) Before competitions, you are stressed, worried, and
anxious.
5) You pace with your arms folded during matches.
6) You are angry after matches.
7) The drive home from the tournament is your time to
vent.
8) You are disappointed for days after a loss.
9) You believe that you know better than your athlete's
coaches and trainers.
10) You obsessively talk about tennis 24/7.

If you are committing to even half of these parental “sins,”

it’s time to re-evaluate your behavior.

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Kobe’s Approach
I’m from Southern California. I’m not necessarily a Lakers
basketball fanatic, but I was a huge Kobe fan. As a lifelong
student of high-performance sports, I was fascinated by his
approach to greatness. He realized that you need a different
approach than the rest to become the best. His developmental
plan was very detailed, and his pre-game preparation was
exceptional. His self-awareness and opponent awareness were
insane. He studied his past game videos and future opponents’
game day tapes. The extra work he put into his job outside the
team’s regular training was sheer discipline.
Solution: Apply Kobe’s discipline to your athlete’s
developmental blueprint. He called it the “Mamba Mentality.”
He said it’s all about focusing on the process and trusting in
the hard work when it matters most. His Five Pillars of the
Mamba Mentality:
1) Resilience
2) Fearlessness
3) Obsessiveness
4) Relentlessness
5) Passion

His above five pillars are more about strong character traits
than lessons in the fundamentals of basketball. He states that
hard work outweighs talent every time. Kobe said, “Mamba
mentality is about 4 a.m. workouts and always doing more than
the next guy.” Can your tennis athlete learn from a master in
another sport? I think so!
As you know, tennis isn’t an easy game to play. It is even harder
to master. Without the help of a well-educated tennis parent
like you, your athlete has very little chance.

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Six Anticipatory Skills
Anticipatory skills are techniques advanced tennis players use
to decrease the amount of time it takes them to respond to the
structure of a point. Anticipation relies on conditional
awareness, broad vision, mental processing speed, score
management, ball-tracking ability, and spotting tendencies, to
name a few. Anticipating a competitive event begins with how
well the athlete has prepared for pressure. Preparation includes
the physical, mental, and emotional demands of training to
compete at one’s peak performance level for approximately
twelve to fifteen sets in a three-day event.
These awareness skills fall into the athlete’s software
development.
Solution: The following are advanced concepts, so start
“planting the seeds” of anticipation by discussing:
 Broad vision clues include where the ball will land in
the opponent’s court, the opponent’s intentions based
on their court position and strike zone, and the
opponent’s swing speed and swing length. All these
millisecond clues tell a story that advanced players size
up each time the ball crosses the net.
 Mental processing speed involves self-awareness
(recognizing the quality of their shots, what’s working
-what’s not working) and opponent awareness
(recognizing the quality of their opponent’s shots -
what’s working and what’s not working).
 Score management relates to knowing when to play
bold or grind based on the score. There are both
positive and negative game points. Consider the
scoring situation and the observations of both self and
opponent awareness when managing the correct play,
depending on the score situation.

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  Ball tracking ability relates to the ball’s speed, spins,
and trajectories. Athletes need to anticipate the
incoming ball’s flight path and depth. Athletes move
and space properly and decide on the correct swing
length, adjusting their swing path and speed based on
their ball-tracking skills.
 Spotting tendencies relate to both your athlete and
their opponent’s shot choices. Recognizing the
opponent’s style of play, their favorite patterns, their
strengths and weaknesses in strokes, and court
coverage would all assist in anticipating their possible
future tactical choices. Paying attention to how the
opponent anticipates your athlete’s game plan and
manages the score also plays a vital role in your
athlete’s anticipatory skill sets.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, this could take a while,” You’re right.

Plan weekly classroom sessions with a high IQ coach to discuss
these advanced software skills.
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CHAPTER 19: LEADERSHIP

“An Individual Can’t Control the Outcome

…Only Influence It.”

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Characteristics of Leaders
The athlete’s psychology determines how they approach their
training and matches. Their approach to nurturing
relationships with opponents, practice partners, academy
mates, and coaches is character driven. As you develop their
positive character traits and reduce their negative choices, their
leadership traits will emerge.
Looking long term, college coaches seek positive character as
much as a big serve. Coaches are looking for courageous,
reliable future teammates to help them win titles. Place your
child ahead of the crowd by taking these traits seriously.
Positive characteristics will impact your child’s ability to earn
that big-time college scholarship offer.
Solution: Peak into these dozen leadership traits. Are they
already part of your child’s skill sets? If not, plan on nurturing
them.
Leadership Traits:
 Confident
 Resourceful
 Enthusiastic
 Proactive
 Integrity
 Loyalty
 Kindness
 Sincerity
 Persistence
 Open-Minded
 Cooperative
 Optimistic

Leadership traits help ensure future success in tennis, business,

and life.

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Relationship Building
Building relationships is a significant key to success, and your
athlete has to master the skill if they want to thrive, not just
survive in the high-performance arena. Relating to others is the
first step toward networking in and around the tennis world.
Better opportunities are often discovered through
relationships with peers, friends, coaches, clinics, or
tournaments.
Because tennis is an individual sport, tennis players must
develop strong people skills to enhance tennis goals and
maintain social interactions. Strong communication skills
improve mental health by enabling tennis players to maintain
friendships inside and outside of the world of tennis. Young
tennis players with few social interactions are often unevenly
developed.
An athlete's personality profile will determine the amount of
time or effort dedicated to social needs. Of course, extroverts
may have to restrict social activities, and introverts may need
to be encouraged to be social. The goal for the tennis parent is
to recognize socialization is essential to developing a successful
athlete but to choose wisely because the people your child
spends time with matter.
Happiness is a contagious character trait. According to the
research, happy friends boost your athlete's chance of
happiness by 15%. Helping others with their issues puts your
athlete in a more contented state. Athletes with relationships
rate their family ties as more positive after interacting with
friends. Top competitors need a certain amount of healthy
decompression away from the sport.
Solution: Now that we know how important it is to find, build,
and maintain relationships, how do you help your athlete?
First, the customized answers you seek are inside your athlete's

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personality profile. Are they social butterflies or bookworms?
Are they attracted to positive partners or dark passengers?
Finding, building, and maintaining those positive influences is
an inside job that requires customized answers. Regardless,
scheduling social time must be a component of your tennis
athlete's schedule. It's the companionship that matters most.
True friends make us feel like we matter and nothing says you
matter, like making the time to be together.

204
Reality Check
After years of not getting the results we believe our athletes are
capable of, we need to look at the fact that there is likely a
reality that is more aligned with who they are instead of who
they want to be. Not every athlete participating in high-
performance sports ends up as an All-American on a full-ride
playing NCAA D1 sports. An old college slogan was, “Most
athletes turn pro at something other than their sport.”
If you genuinely believe that your athlete can achieve better
results, it’s time you and your child take a leadership role in
their deliberate, customized developmental plan. Here’s a life
skill worth teaching.
Solution: Stop “winging it,” hoping someone else will organize
your child’s customized developmental plan. The CEO of this
organization, to get your athlete on the map, is the primary
tennis parent.
Goals without a deliberate customized developmental plan are
only dreams in disguise. We all have dreams, but that’s not
enough to master this game. A weekly customized blueprint is
the start if you and your athlete desire a future in the upper
echelons of the sport.

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Get Into Their World
Kids forced to grow outside their brain design grow for a while
but then wither away. Young athletes, like all people, have
unique personality profiles. They see the world differently,
think, and problem-solve uniquely with their brain design.
For example, just because you are wired with a brain and body
type that thrives in a specific athletic setting, it doesn’t mean
your child is wired the same. Heart-based parenting may be
more beneficial than old-school drill sergeant parenting.
Solution: Surrender your ego and apply emotional aptitude.
Teach from the perspective of saying, “I don’t know how you would
approach it, but I’m willing to listen.” You become a person your
children can easily identify with and respect by doing so.
Raise your children to be self-sufficient, to make their own
decisions as soon as they’re able, and to feel pride in the good
choices they do make. I will make a strong recommendation
again: discover personality profiles. You’re a few Google clicks
away from uncovering your child’s genetic predisposition. I
promise you that your relationship with your children will
deepen when you gain a better understanding of their genetic
predisposition.

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Pattern Blocks
Let’s go back in time. I was fresh out of School and wanted a
career in coaching.
I drove to California as many do to seek the “Promised Land.”
My goal was to track down Vic Braden, whom I watched on
PBS television. The Vic Braden Tennis College was more of a
tennis Mecca, a tennis Olympic village, than a typical tennis
club. Inside the Coto De Caza gates were the state-of-the-art
Research center, tennis classrooms, dedicated teaching courts,
and the 18-lanes ball machines. I truly felt like I had found my
tribe.
There were hundreds of tennis research projects, but I’ll review
the Length of the Point Project for this piece. Juniors to adult
recreation players to college and professional athletes took part
in the study. Back in the 1980s, the average length of a singles
point was 3.8 hits. Doubles was 2.9 hits.
In the 1990s, Computennis took it to the next level with very
similar results. Today IBM Watson provides the statistics.
Today’s stats also say that most points don’t last longer than
four hits. So, what does that mean to you as a parent of an
athlete desperately seeking an edge? If approximately 70% of
all points end by the fourth hit, your athlete must drill in short,
pattern play training blocks versus the typical endless grooving
of groundstrokes. Now, I’m not saying consistency isn’t
important. It is. But the question I’m posing is, “Consistency
in what context?” Here are the pattern blocks I’ve been
coaching since the 1980s.
Solution: Trade in grooving groundstrokes to pattern block
repetition. You see, tennis points are won by inserting the
correct protocols the millisecond demands.

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I recommend modeling a private lesson in this format:
 Take a two-hour lesson to replicate the length of a
difficult match.
 Arrive ten minutes early and do a quality dynamic
stretching warm-up, mental rehearsals of top patterns,
and upper body band work.
 Thirty minutes -Rehearse the serve+2 quick stroke
patterns. Typically- hunting forehands.
 Thirty minutes - Rehearse the return of serve +1
patterns off both first and second serves. Typically-
hunting forehands.
 Twenty minutes - Rehearse, hitting deep
groundstrokes receiving, and delivering on the run.
 Twenty minutes- Rehearse short ball options
(Approach, crush it, swing volley, drop shots and
transition volleys).
 Twenty minutes – While the athlete is doing their
static stretching routines, do a lesson review. Ask the
coach if it’s okay to record the review on your athlete’s
cell phone dictation app so they can commit the lesson
to memory.

This private lesson format trains situational awareness and

protocols, not just the strokes. For instance, offensive,
neutral/building shot, and defensive situations.

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Training Time
How we teach our children to allocate their time and energy
determines their accomplishments. What would you find if
your athlete were to audit each day for a week?
In one week, how do they spend their time? We each get the
same 24 hours a day, so how much time was spent on their
deliberate, customized tennis development? Does the training
correlate with what creates the outcome goals they seek? How
was their actual focus, intensity, energy, and momentum? This
weekly review audit references the quality of their time spent
developing their tennis game.
These are tough questions. They hit an athlete at the core so
expect some pullback.
Solution: Ask your athlete to audit one week of their life.
There is often a big gap between what they say they did and
what they actually did. Accountability is leadership in disguise.
If your athlete is giving away their days, they are actually giving
away their tennis future.
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210
CONCLUSION

If we want our young athletes to maximize their potential at a

quicker rate, we, as parents, have to shift our course. Parents
need a framework to navigate the junior tennis journey, and
my goal is to provide guidance.
A successful competitive athlete has learned to be successful
on and off the court through well-developed hardware and
software skills. It is up to the parents to manage the
development of technical, fitness, mental, and emotional skill
sets. Solid strokes get your athletes into the events, but mental
and emotional strength brings home the trophies.
A winning tennis parent is an involved parent who prioritizes
harmony throughout the tennis developmental process by
monitoring a positive mental and emotional psychological
state, stroke mechanics, and athleticism. Success results from
organization, preparation, and implementation- it does not
happen by chance.
Parental satisfaction is knowing you made your best effort to
maximize your athlete’s potential.
I hope you enjoyed the book! Frank

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INDUSTRY EXPERT TESTIMONIALS

“Frank keeps outdoing himself with each publication. The

Psychology of Tennis Parenting is his best work to date and
most important. The junior athletes need support from
coaches and parents. I cannot tell you how often I have seen
successful junior athletes falter due to a parent’s lack of
awareness. Now every parent can have the tools to positively
assist their junior player in their journey.”
Dean Hollingworth, MTPS, CSCS, Director of High-
Performance Club CDL, Canada

Frank is one of the leading coaches in the world who has lived,
breathed, and been immersed in every situation in the game of
tennis. This book answers the parent’s questions and gives
solutions to these in a simple manner. This truly is another gem
of a bible.
Andy Dowsett, Founder SYSTEM-9, England

Tennis players at the highest level all look the same from the
outside. What makes the difference between these players is
the X Factor. Knowing Frank for many years, I can say that
Frank knows how to adapt to each individual player and help
them reach the next level of mental toughness. This is what
makes Frank so unique.
Shaul Zohar, Professional Tennis Coach, Tennis Israel

213
Frank’s new book is much needed in the current world of
youth sports. When a parent develops a healthy mindset for
the journey of junior tennis the sport can be used as a learning
tool for so much more than hitting a fuzzy yellow ball.
Certainly, it will help your child’s development on the court
but more importantly it will help your child’s development in
the game of life.
Alex Slezak, Tennis coach/Podcast Host, Pennsylvania

“Once again Frank has hit it out of the park. The Psychology
of Tennis Parenting is chock-full of great insight for parents to
help their kids become the best they can be, both on and off
the court. A must read for tennis parents!”
Cari Buck

“Phenomenal read! Once again, Frank does such an amazing

job of balancing being concise and extremely thorough. Every
section is gold. If you are involved in junior development,
whether it’s coaching, parenting or both, this is a must read.”
Adrian Games, Owner Advantage Tennis Academy,
California

The dramas & traumas of competitive tennis don’t have age

barriers. We all struggle to manage the inevitable ups and
downs and to perform well under pressure. This wonderful
book empowers players of all ages with practical tools to thrive,
not wilt, at crunch time and throughout their tennis journeys!
P.J. Simmons, Founder, Net Gains Foundation / The Tennis
Congress, New York

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Once again, Frank has touched on the key elements to finding
success in tennis and in life. Parents who think pouring
thousands of dollars into tennis will guarantee their child’s
success need to read this book carefully. Frank's tips for simply
finding happiness in life will change your and your athlete's
approach to everything they attempt.
Debbie Graham Shaffer, Former WTA, USTA High-
Performance Coach, California

I’ve had the privilege of being part of Frank’s workshops and

know first-hand the value of the information he shares with
parents, players, and coaches. This latest book addresses a
subject near and dear to my heart, the Tennis Parent. Once
again, Frank offers actionable advice to help everyone involved
have a successful Junior Tennis Journey.”
Lisa Stone, Creator of the ParentingAces Website & Podcast

The Psychology of Tennis Parenting is a must-read for any

tennis parent – actually, for the parent of any athlete. Too many
tennis parents, despite their best intentions, detract not only
from their child’s competitive success but also from their
child’s well-being. Be the parent who bolsters their child by
understanding exactly what your child needs from you to
develop into a confident athlete who thrives when given the
opportunity to succeed. Let Frank tell you about others’
mistakes so you can avoid them, and let him help you get to
know your child better so you can help them be the best they
can be - both on and off the court.
Tammy, Top 3 Nationally/USTA Community Service
Volunteer

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216
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank Giampaolo is an award-winning international coach,
popular international speaker, and sports researcher. He is an
instructional writer for ITF (International Tennis Federation)
Coaching & Sports Science Review, UK Tennis Magazine,
PTR Magazine, the USPTA, Tennis Magazine, Tennis Pro
Magazine, and Tennis View Magazine. Frank is both a USPTA
and PTR Award-Winning educator, a Tennis Congress Faculty
Member, served as the Vice Chair of the USTA/SCTA
Coaches Commission, and a featured speaker at the Australian
Grand Slam Coaches Convention, the PTR GB Wimbledon
Conference, and Wingate Sports Institute (Israel.)
Frank is the bestselling author of Championship Tennis
(Human Kinetics Publishing), The Tennis Parent’s Bible
(Volumes I & II), Emotional Aptitude In Sports, Neuro
Priming for Peak Performance, Raising Athletic Royalty, The
Soft Science of Tennis, Preparing for Pressure, Innovative
Tennis Charting, How to Attract a College Tennis Scholarship,
and Customized Player Assessment. His television
appearances include The NBC Today Show, OCN-World
Team Tennis, Fox Sports, Tennis Canada, and Tennis
Australia.
Frank founded The Tennis Parents Workshops in 1998,
conducting workshops across the United States, Mexico,
Israel, New Zealand, Australia, England, Canada, and Spain.
Frank’s commitment to coaching excellence helped develop
over 100 National Champions, hundreds of NCAA athletes,
numerous NCAA All-Americans and several professional
athletes. His innovative approach has made him a worldwide
leader in athletic-parental education.
Contact Frank Giampaolo
(949)933-8163
FGSA@earthlink.net
www.MaximizingTennisPotential.com
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