Play to win or to progress?

“A few weeks ago in the virtual national congress of the Spanish Tennis Federation, the speaker Toni Nadal explained that once when Rafa Nadal was 14 years old, after winning the first set in one of the matches he played, he told him to finish points from the net in the second set, avoiding play from the baseline. The key thing is that Rafa knew he would win the match playing from the baseline, but he accepted Toni’s challenge facing a much more complicated score for the second set, far away from his comfort zone.  

Toni Nadal commented that on that day he saw that his nephew was special ...

It is not so easy to accept this demand of Toni, because it can make us lose control of the game, force us to make more mistakes, or to play worse in front of the opponent and spectators. You need a lot of humility and values for that. 

But this is the only way to progress, not playing for winning, just playing with a focus to improve and achieve long-term goals. And that is what we have been doing at BTA by setting goals for every match and analysing them afterwards. The underlying objective is not to be the best, but just a better player every month. We pass it on at the academy, trying to keep our players far from the winning or losing mentality, failure or success philosophy.

For me as a sport psychologist it’s very sad when I hear coaches telling their players: “You MUST win!”.  Our society separates losers from winners. If you lose a match, you are the worst; you feel sad and bad about yourself, but if you win, ‘Oh my god, what a feeling’ … and this is completely dysfunctional. 

The second is the first of the losers, but in a tennis tournament we only have one winner and all the others lose, then we have a problem and a huge frustration, which frequently leads to decisions to give up tennis. Then sedentary life follows and this is actually the moment when, yes, we have failed completely, not when losing a match. 

Effort is undervalued. Stay focused on the score and the immediacy rewards make our players opt for an easy option such as Fortnite, or trying to be a YouTuber, win easy money doing nothing...and that’s not the way.  

As Gandhi says “ Total effort is a success in itself “.

BTA Sports Psychologist Oriol Mercade