Volume 43: A Young Person's Case for Using Tennis Tactics in Real Life
*minus the tennis balls
Welcome back to What Needs Knowing. It is a pleasure to meet up here with all you at the end of each week. I regularly find myself keeping a small list of notes with everything I’m excited to discuss in the newsletter. This week, almost all of those notes had to do with the great sport of tennis. Keep reading to learn why.
Moments: Rallying Off the Court
This week, the Australian Open got started featuring big upsets, notable absences, and the down-under return of Novak Djokovic and a pack of hopeful usurpers looking to take their place as the next generation of great tennis players. Of course, I can’t forget the return of Rafael Nadal, last year’s tournament champion and my favorite male tennis player. Despite entering the tournament as World #1, an injury and an upset at the hands of an American (also named Mackenzie) caused an early exit. Fingers crossed he is healthy in time for clay season.
My ESPN+ subscription is getting a workout and I stayed up past midnight a couple times this week totally mesmerized by the athleticism, focus, and pure grit on display in Melbourne. Newly armed with self-knowledge (but no more effective at listening to Self 2) from reading The Inner Game of Tennis following last year’s U.S. Open, I am a spectator of two games on the court: the physical one and the mental one. It is the latter that is most impressive to me and the defining characteristic of players who are able to challenge the outgoing roster of dominant players we all know and love.
Feeling like I’ve jumped off the deep end and have drunk the Kool-Aid of an exclusive, isolating, individual sport? You’re probably right. But I am hoping I can invite as many people to join me in the pool as possible because my newest belief is that the best tennis players in the world have something to teach every single one of us about mental toughness. Namely that toughness pairs well with humility and strength comes from outlasting the suffering. Still not convinced? Here are three common strategies from tennis that apply to our regular, garden-variety lives:
Self Talk Goes a Long Way: We have all seen the clips of tennis players talking—or rather shouting—at themselves following either a winner or an unforced error. In a sport that largely forbids in-game coaching, the self talk of the athlete has to step in to offer judgement, adjustments, and pep talks. Watching players dig themselves out of holes (like being down two sets in a best-of-five match and still winning or getting broken during their service game only to break their opponent right back) is like watching a piece of clay be smashed up into a shapeless blob only to persistently reform by way of a mysterious energy from within. It is that mysterious energy that powers the self talk. When a player yells, admonishes themselves, protests towards the umpire, or even gets angry at the crowd, they are using their voice to jump-start improvement from within. Spectators might hear a player yell, “WHY?!” following a missed shot but what we don’t hear is that the very best players’ internal monologue promptly answers that question “WHY?!” and suggests a new way to approach the problem in the next point. Their inner self talk is calm, without judgement, and constant. On the next point, the spectators see an entirely new player serve the ball, armed with the self actualization that is necessary to change one’s approach in the pressure that is a globally televised major tennis match.
If I could harness an ounce of that mental control, imagine how self aware and thoughtful my work or writing could be? Or perhaps more topically for someone who is in the midst of getting comfortable in a new job, that type of mental fortitude could completely squash the feelings of imposter syndrome that inevitably creep in. In summary, self talk is powerful stuff and tennis players are experts at it.
Ruthless Competition and Camaraderie Can Coexist: I have heard the argument that the best competitors cannot possibly be the kindest or most empathetic person. The selfishness and single-minded focus that is required to become excellent at an individual sport can’t possibly produce someone who goes about their lives worrying about the feelings of others. Let me set the record straight: I generally believe this theory is true but not universally and professional tennis is one of the few sports where you can regularly see this theory challenged on the court. For example, this week I watched multiple matches in which players were solely focused on returning serves or playing winners (a un-returnable shot) in order to advance to the next round and earn a sizable amount of prize money for their efforts. However, as with any sport, there are moments in which something strange happens and disrupts this competitive flywheel. Perhaps a baseline shot catches the net and happens to fall down on the opponent’s side completely out of reach for the player who was preparing to return the expected long baseline shot. In this moment, the aggressing player raises their hand and acknowledges that their earned point was not pure or fair. They didn’t win the point because of an incredible shot or the mistake of an opponent. Instead, the tension of the net won the point randomly for a competitor and in that moment, both players shrug their shoulders and have empathy for the person across the court.
I admit this is a pretty subtle point but I think it holds a great amount of significance in the way we interact with strangers or colleagues. It is a physical demonstration of when two people’s single-minded approach to something (in tennis’ case, it is the idea of competition itself) can turn their self-centeredness into empathy. More simply, no one understands your own trials or tribulations as much as someone trying to achieve the very same thing.
A Short Memory: Tennis matches are just long enough that players can’t possibly maintain the same level of performance throughout the ordeal. Fatigue sets in and with it, mental challenges that come in the form of missed shots or errors. But the only way to recover from those challenges quickly enough to have a hope of continuing to compete in such a short competition is if players simply forget about their past mistakes. In order to move forward and continue attacking their opponent, they must have a short memory and avoid dwelling on the balls that didn’t go their way.
This is a pretty big cheat code for life, which is simply too short to remember all your mistakes or to hold lengthy grudges against yourself. How else will you continue improving if you can’t forget the one email in which you used too many (or too little?) exclamation points?
Part of my inspiration to write about tennis this week was the release of Break Point, a docu-series on Netflix from the producers of Drive to Survive, the hit show about Formula 1. Break Point follows a couple of the tennis stars (not the greats but many of the hopeful usurpers that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece) during the demanding tennis season as each attempts to harness all of their passion and finally achieve their dream of winning a grand slam. It gets a full endorsement from me. Watch the trailer here:
Parting Shots:
Thank you for joining me this week as I broke out my introspective writing voice for the first time in a while. The above advice is mainly what I’ve been chanting to myself (look at that self talk!) as I wade through learning a new job while also writing this newsletter and turning 26 with lots of goals on the horizon for this trip around the sun. Don’t let the mistakes get you down this weekend and consider tuning into the Australian Open. Talk soon,
-Mackenzie “looking for the Merriam-Webster definition of rizz” Timbel
Mac - love, love your newsletter and all the info you so expertly recite. However, I also love your recommendations for the books you have heard about or reading:)
Good one Mac!