Recovering After a Bad Tennis Match

The big tennis match came. You prepared the best way you know how. You played your heart out...and you've lost. What do you do after you lose a big tennis match? Answering this question could determine a great deal of the success of your tennis career (or club reputation). Learning how to recover from disappointment and regaining confidence is vital if you want to keep playing good tennis.

First of all, give yourself a mental break from it. If you try to analyze all of it right after the match, it just may be too much for you to handle at the moment. Give yourself some time to come down from the emotion and disappointment so that you can give a wise and balanced assessment of your performance.

After you've calmed down, you can actually see why you lost the match. It's helpful if someone else watched the match. Break down into the Xs and Os of it, if you can. You may discover that you really didn't do anything wrong. It's possible that you were just overmatched. If that's the case; you'll just have to get over it. There is always going to be someone better than you. It doesn't make you a bad player. It just makes you human. Maybe you just had a bad day. If this is so, this is something else you'll just have to get over. Humans have bad days, so don't feel like you need to hang up your racquet.

If you lost on the tennis court wasn't because of the first two reason, maybe you missed the mark in a crucial area of your game plan. This is where having someone observe the match really comes in handy. They have an objective view of the match that you may not be able to see. Once you discover why you lost, you can alter your training regiment to correct the problems. If it's bad footwork, you can do some drills to firm it up. Did your backhand fly on you? Figure out where the hitch is so you can correct it. (sidebar: if you come close to losing a match when a particular stroke or other component of your game broke down, work on that piece extensively during your next practice. It will give you confidence going into the next match).