The Mental Advantage: Developing Your Psychological Skills in Tennis

This is without a doubt one of the best books on the market that covers the mental part of competitive tennis. It is the only book I am aware of that highlights some of the best aspects of the work of different contributors to the area of mental development in tennis: Tim Gallwey, Jim Loehr, and Karl Slaikeu, to name just a few. I have been teaching and coaching tennis for 35+ years and use bits and pieces from all of these experts. This is truly a great resource!

I am a NTRP 4-4.5 player who has struggled more than a year to break through to the next level. I have found myself losing matches with the same 'stupid' mistakes. By reading this book and Brad Gilbert's book, I believe that my games are on the way to improve. Gilbert's book focuses on an analyse of the opponent's game plan and weakness. His book, too long on tales of his matches, short on practical instructions, teaches me to be aware of what the opponents and I are doing. Sounds easy, but difficult to do. I was too focused on chasing, mindlessly hitting the ball and cursing my mistakes to know how and why I won and lost a point.This book, tells me WHY I was too focused on cursing my mistakes: too much stress. His analysis of the symptoms are dead-on. A lot of useful tips to deal with anxiety, both during training and during match. It aims to develop 6 skills -regulating anxiety -improving concentration -self talk -imagery -building confidence - motivation through goal setting.Practical and structural text makes it easy to ready and have an overview.Overall, the two books have forced me to be much more displined in my thinking during playing. Before: sloppy mental habit of just hitting the balls, negative thoughts triggered by external circumstances: mistakes, pressure.Now: An internal-driven, disciplined and structured thinking routine, an established routine that I try to use for every point, independent of losing or winning. Using his tips, I would - slow down after a point, making a mental note what I and my opponent just did, ie. why I just won or lost. This will be incorporated in my future plan. - walk around looking at my racket focusing on positive self-talk and monitoring of any anxiety symptoms building up. - review my strategy for the next point and imagine how it will play out. For example, if I will serve, where I will place the ball and how my serve stroke will 'feel' like. - watch the seams of the ball and its path during the point to focus my attention, consciously coil the body then hit/snap though the ball with good folllow-through, instead of mindless hitting the ball. It prevents me to rush through the stroke and gives me a fluid movement.Highly recommended

This book turned my game around. Previously, I found myself losing close matches, doubting my abilities and walking into tennis matches sometimes feeling intimidated. This book showed me not only how this negativity hurts my game, but more importantly, how to turn this negative thinking to positive and to build my confidence. Now I am winning these matches and walking in with fire in my heart to beat my opponent. The only slight criticism I have is that the author can be a bit wordy and spends alot of time explaining why a concept is important before he shows how to implement it. Overall I would say that is book is a Must Buy!

As an intermediate level club player I have found myself losing matches that I should have won. I knew that my mind was playing against me, but I wasn't sure what to do. This book gave me exercises to improve my level of concentration as well as hints to improve my self confidence. As I read this book I wondered how the author knew so much about my game. It feels great to walk on the court and have something in my mental "file" when the going gets rough.