Interactive Source Map

What are the struggles behind being a tennis player and how do you deal with them?

Maintain Focus and Concentration During a Match

Tennis Psycology

BreakPoint

The Mental Health of Tennis Players Is No Longer in the Shadows

Concentration

Break Point

Martin Webb

Key Ideas

Overview

• There are some players that talk about quitting because of how hard and physically grueling the sport is.
• Tennis players train their entire life for the matches that they play in and it can be very mentally exhausting.
• Professional tennis athletes are put under so much pressure to succeed in such a high level sport.
• Every style of play is a tournament so there is only one winner, which means it can be very hard losing.
• A quote from Novak Djokovic, one of the best players of all time. “Everyone can hit amazing forehands and backhands, but it is the mental toughness of the all time greats that set them apart.”

BreakPoint is a documentary that gives people behind the scenes looks at the lives of tennis players. It is real professional tennis players talking about their feelings and struggles with the sport of tennis. It was filmed in 2022 and 2023 and has 2 seasons. The second season just came out in February 2024. You can watch this documentary on Netflix and The CW. Many of the big tennis names and stars that you can find in this show are Félix Auger-Aliassime, Paula Badosa, Matteo Berrettini, Taylor Fritz, Ons Jabeur, Thanasi Kokkinakis, Nick Kyrgios, Casper Ruud, Aryna Sabalenka, Maria Sakkari.

Role in the Conversation

This source plays a huge role in the conversation of revealing the mental struggles of tennis players because all of the information that is put out there by this source, is coming from professional tennis athletes. This is also a massive source because it is a documentary that is on Netflix and can be seen by millions of people.

Concentration

International Tennis Federation(IFT)

Key Ideas

Overview

• "It is important to understand that concentration is not ‘lost’ but redirected to both internal and external distractions."(IFT)
• Concentration is so urgent in a match because, a single error of concentration can easily be the difference between winning and losing a match.
• Players tend to summon the thought of previous points and it erodes their concentration in the middle of a match.
• Players have difficulty when they look ahead to the next set in the middle of a match, if a player is in the lead and they just look at the next set because they are going to win the current one it can totally shift the momentum of the match and cause the player to lose that set.

This article was published in 2019 by the International Tennis Federation and is about Concentration in tennis and how important it is. It give quality justifications as to what concentration is in this sport and how players can "lose" concentration in a match and what they can do to gain that concentration back.

Role in Conversation

This source has a huge role in the conversation because concentration is one of the most important aspects of this sport. The matches are anywhere from 2-6 hours long, o thing about being on the long end of that and how much energy and concentration that takes.

Tennis Psycology(Academic Source

Gareth j. Mole

Key Ideas

Overview

This is an academic article written by Gareth J. Mole in 2019. It is an academic source becasue the author is an expert in sports psycology. It was published by Condor Performance which is a group of sports psychologists. These sources get more into the emotional side of the tennis players. It gives the audience a cool perspective of what the players are going through when playing a match. It gives good detailed pieces of information and makes references to tennis legend John McEnroe.

• "Tennis Psychology Is Not Wellbeing Within The Tennis Community"(Mole)
• You can always get better at specific shots and physically at tennis, but sometimes training the mind in mental toughness during a match is more beneficial than physical training in tennis..
• Being motivated is one of if not the most important parts of being a professional tennis player.
• You could be the most talented player in the world, that doesn’t mean you are the best player in the world.
• You need to have the passion and drive to want to play and get better.

Role in the Conversation

This source plays a big role in the conversation because this is another great article that gives the audience the perspective of the athletes. It is interesting to give my audience the perspective of the players and what self-talk they go through during a match, and if that is negative how do they turn it positive.

Maintain Focus and Concentration During a Match

Key Ideas

Dr. Larry Lauer

Overview

• Becoming a champion means committing yourself to good habits of focus and concentration that can put yourself in the right position to be successful during a match.
• While playing in a match, a player should be in full focus in every single point.
• One of the biggest thing tennis players do in a match to help themselves stay calm and concentrated is just taking the match one point at a time.
• Almost every time, when players respond with positive body language, it will create a ton of self confidence on the court. Having positive body language cannot hurt you at all.

• Playing in the moment is one of the most critical pieces of tennis, you cannot think about future points or past points, focus on the current point, because if you start thinking about the next set, it is going to hurt you.

This is an article about how focused a tennis player has to be in a match and some of the mental practices they perform while in a match. The article was published in 2017 by the USTA (United States Tennis Association) and was written by Dr. Larry Lauer. It just lays out a list of mental practices that tennis players perform while also giving some pointers.

Role in the Conversation

This source shows what kind of extreme focus and mental strategy it takes to be a professional tennis player as well as how important routines are.

The Mental Health of Tennis Players is No Longer in the Shadows

Key Ideas

Cindy Shmerler

• The sport of tennis is extremely burdensome which puts the athletes in the sport in anxious situations.
• Tennis is a very time consuming sport that has the athletes on their own support systems with limited resources.
• Tennis players are traveling 11 months out of the year.
• The unique thing about tennis is that every single style of play is a tournament style which is a bracket, sometimes single elimination, sometimes more, but in all of these tournaments there is only one winner so it can be very burdensome on players when they continue to fall short.
• "The WTA, which has offered mental health services for more than 20 years, recently began a more aggressive approach by adding four mental health care providers, one of whom is at tournaments year-round."(Shmerler)

Overview

This source was written by Cindy Shmerler in 2022 and published by the New York Time. It is about bringing the mental health of tennis players out of the shadows. She writes about how high the expectations are for professional tennis players. She brings in multiple examples of struggles of pro players and uses many quotes from them.

Role in Conversation

This source is so importants in the conversation because it is a very long article that gives many perspectives and examples of how pro players are struggling in tennis. This can bring this problem of tennis mental health out of the shadows so we can do something about it.