Great men’s final yesterday, wasn’t it?  Now, even though many of us kind of expected Federer to take it,  Andy still had a great chance believe it or not, to win this match and take claim to his first grand slam victory.

Oh yea,  he could ‘ve very well done it, if he would’ve handled the nerves better and avoided the 4 mental mistakes below. Check em out to make sure you can avoid them too in your next match. 

Mental Mistake #1

Mental Tension & Wasted Winning Opportunities: Murray was nervous from the get go -  so internally rattled, it really affected his court movement and his ability to capitalize on short balls as well as defensive positions produced by Roger. And because of that, there we’re many times during the first set where Andy failed to take advantage of his hard work.

What ended up happening was, he would start to close the door on a point, get Roger on the defense with a great shot to his backhand, and then just sit back there 2 to 3 steps behind the baseline and wait for Roger to get back in position again.

Then he’d just hit another stroke from virtually the same spot as the one prior. He seemingly would do everything imaginable except come in and attack Federer when the opportunities presented themselves. It looked like to me that he wanted to sit back and let Roger beat himself.

So, in other words, he was basically swinging the door wide open again for Roger to get back in the point time and time again. And as he continued to do  this, the deficit kept getting wider and wider in Federer’s favor. And Federer would come back around and repeatedly make the best of that second chance with a winner of his own.

And with that, came extra pressure on Andy and further blocked him from being able to play care-free tennis. So instead, he became even more tight, and even more reluctant to leave the baseline.  At that point, he *REALLY* didn’t want to make a mistake.  He even looked frozen at times. He wasn’t moving (…floating) effortlessly or freely at all.

How did I come to the strong conclusion that it was nerve related? Well, Andy love coming in and attacking.  In fact, that’s what he’s been doing it all tournament.  In fact, he’s won 80.2% of the points when he’s made an advance to net.

So, why would he stop now when it could mean the biggest win of his career? Nerves. He was playing NOT to lose the match instead of playing TO WIN match.

It must have been driving his coach and supporter’s box insane. Roger even said that he noticed Andy was a bit passive in the match, and that gave him some great opportunities to take capitalize on.

CORRECTION: Learn from Andy’s mistake and take the initiative when you have your opponent on the run. Play TO WIN. Once you see that your opponent is on the ropes, you’ve got to turn on the attack switch. Get your butt off that baseline.

Unless you’re a “pusher,” you don’t have to wait for your opponent to miss. You’re in control of things out there. Don’t just give it all up and give them tons of second chances.  Without going  overboard, take the reins and make them pay.

If you don’t feel comfortable going to net, at least come forward some to cut off more of your opponent’s angles and apply some added pressure. This will hopefully force them into making more errors.

Mental Mistake #2:

Murray Rode The Emotional Roller-Coaster: Oh, this one really hurt him. He was “wearing his heart on his sleeve” throughout a great piece of that match. You could see it in his face, in his body language, and of course when he slammed his racket during that third set.

That shows us, and more importantly his opponent, that he was riding an emotional wave and could be crashing against the rocks at any given moment.

Oh yea, and Roger did notice. After the match he sited this, and that was a cue for him to get more aggressive with Andy to make him break that much faster.

CORRECTION: You never want to show your emotions out there during a match. Why? Because you’re never going to be working on an emotionally level playing field.  You’re going to be on cloud 9 when you win a point , then down in the dumps when you lose one.

You’ll be in mental limbo throughout the match and have no stability.  You’ll be playing under different circumstances almost every time you swing.  You don’t want that.

If you stay even and don’t let yourself get too attached to any one point, you’ll have much more of a mental balance throughout. And the likelihood of you getting rattled will be very low.

Oh, and by keeping it inside, you don’t want to give your opponent’s confidence a boost and add fuel to your opponent’s competitive fire. You want to put it out :).

Mental Mistake #3:

Double Fault Drama: His ability to get his serve in was a major problem in this AO final.  Throughout all Andy’s matches, leading up to the final, his serve was pretty “ON.”  In 19 sets against the world’s best, he only double faulted 9 times.

That’s pretty remarkable. But against the great R-FED, it took a turn for the worse. Murray had already accumulated 3 “Doubles” by the time  the second set rolled around. And this is the only match that he lost. See a pattern?

The truth of the matter is that your serve is your flagship, one of your MOST important weapons.  It’s the steering wheel for your game plan.  It helps everything else in your game plan  flow for you.  And if that starts to go south, everything else will be taking the plunge as well.

CORRECTION: You don’t want to only focus on having great ground strokes or say, “I’ll get to my serve later” or “I can win it with my forehand.”  That alone won’t get you the win.

So, you want to make sure you dedicate just as much time (…or even more time) to strengthening your serve - and most importantly, the consistency of it.

Having a strong serving game, will allow you to dictate the tempo and control the point from the start.  That said, you don’t want to be able to get it going just “once in a while.”

Do that, and it’s not going to do you any good.  You don’t want to only win every now and then.  The more often you hold serve, the more likely the win will follow.

Oh yea, during your practice sessions and exhibition match play, you want to make sure you serve during pressure situations (…i.e simulated sets).

Because yea, you may be able to do it 49 out of 50 times when your mind is free and clear, but (…in a real match) when you have high stakes and a fire breathing opponent staring at you from the other side, it’s going to be a whole different world.

This will help you gain experience serving with a lead as well as serving while behind.  The MORE you serve during pressure situations, the BETTER you’ll serve in pressure situations.

Mental Mistake #4:

Tentative 2nd Serve: Because Andy’s nerves we’re getting the best of him in many cases, it also effected the speed of his second serve. He couldn’t defend well with it.  Being down to the #1 player in the world on one of the biggest stages in the world can do that to you…wink.

See, since he wasn’t able to blow us away with his first serve percentage, he was forced into a lot of second serve situations.

And when he was attempting to execute them, the outcome wasn’t very pleasant. He tightened up in my opinion.  And as a result, he failed to get much pace on the second serves he did get in. And he put himself in very defensive positions that Roger was able to take full advantage of. BANG BANG BANG!

So, even though your main goal is to get the ball in play on your 2nd, you don’t want to put the point on a silver platter for your opponent to devour. You, at least, need to have something on it. If you don’t, it’s only going to give your opponent tons of free points and give him a royal boost in the confidence department. Two BIG negatives!

CORRECTION: Play with this in practice and find a good  mid-point between your first and your second. You want it strong enough so it doesn’t get crushed, and you want it to have enough spin to keep it controlled and to bring it down into the box.


Mental Mistake #5:

Stuck In A Broken Game Plan: Murray started out the match playing very tentative and very passive on his shots. It looked as if he was just waiting for Roger to make the error (…which he rarely does). Ok.   It was like the inner part of the court was a pit of wild pythons.

He was standing way behind the baseline and would never cross the line.  And it wasn’t working. All it did was produce a 3-6 first set loss.  Ok. Now, you might say, “He made a mistake, all players make mistakes.” Fair enough…  But when he saw it wasn’t working, he didn’t change his main match strategy.

He stuck with the same plan that got him playing catch-up until right before the beginning of the third set. Yea, he waited almost 2 hours before he realized something had to change.

That’s when he finally started to be more aggressive. He started coming inside the court and getting to the net more.  And by that time, he had already dug himself in a hole few rarely come back from, down 2 sets against the world’s #1.

Now granted, when he started to do it consistently, it got him all the way to a 5-2 lead. But then, Federer came back to life, and ruined the young #5 player’s championship hopes. He waited TOO LONG.

Federer was already very relaxed and in a tremendous groove by that time. I mean, he had won the two sets and was cruising.  So, though the strategy change helped, it just wasn’t enough once Federer got going. If he’d have done it earlier, who knows, maybe the tempo of the match would have changed, and we would have had a different outcome. But he didn’t give himself a chance.

CORRECTION: As I learned from one of my coaches, Kirk Wilson, many years ago, you don’t want to stick with a strategy that’s not effective. No, you don’t want to wait until you’ve played 60% of your match and your opponent is already “feeling it” before you start to analyze what’s working and what’s not.

Whether it’s your ground strokes, your serve, baseline strategy, or what angles you’re using, you want to start doing that immediately - as soon as the first couple games of the match.

That way, you can correct it and decrease your chances of being faced with an uphill battle.

Hope you guys enjoyed the 2010 Aussie Open. I wish Andy the best of luck in his next tourney :).  Let me know how you liked these tips by commenting in the box below. I’d love to hear from you.

Have a great day and an even BETTER game!

Brian
TennisMindCamp