In tennis you don’t lose control when you miss a shot.
You lose it when your eyes stop guiding your brain.

A regular part of Jannik Sinner’s warm-up routine has nothing to do with strokes or footwork.

It has to do with his eyes.

During different moments of his career, Sinner openly spoke about episodes of dizziness during matches, even at Grand Slams and recently at the Australian Open:

“I was not feeling really well… I was a bit dizzy at times.”

At professional level, saying this matters.

Because it reveals something uncomfortable:

performance doesn’t collapse in the muscles first.
It collapses in the visual system.

The belief that limits most players

In tennis we constantly talk about:

technique
fitness
mental strength

Almost never about something fundamental:

visual stability.

And yet, when the visual system loses precision, everything follows:

timing breaks down
space perception shrinks
confidence disappears

Not because you are mentally weak.
But because your brain is no longer reading motion correctly.

Why these exercises really matter

“Smooth pursuit” exercises are simple in appearance but complex in effect:

keeping the head still
while tracking the ball only with the eyes

Research shows they:

  • reduce dizziness

  • improve motion prediction

  • stabilize the visual system under stress

They are even more effective than exercises that involve moving the head.

But dizziness is not the main issue.

The real issue is something deeper.

The real topic is not vision

It’s control.

In tennis, predicting the trajectory is not only a visual skill.
It is a cognitive skill.

It means:

you read earlier
you decide earlier
you arrive earlier

When this system is altered, players don’t just lose balance.

They lose mental time.

And when you lose mental time:

you arrive late
you play safer
you force bad decisions
you feel “out of the match”

Without knowing why.

Sinner doesn’t train his eyes to see better.

He trains them for something much more important:

to keep his brain stable while everything around him moves fast.

That’s one of the invisible differences between players who handle pressure
and players who suffer from it.

So the real question is not whether you see well.

It’s this:

👉 how stable is your visual system when the pace rises and the pressure increases?

******

✍️ Who wrote this article

This article was written by Federico Coppini,
mental coach and author specialized in mental performance, emotional stability in competition, and building a resilient competitive mindset.

🧠 Want to train your mind the same way you train your tennis?

If your game collapses when the pressure rises,
you can explore my mental coaching work here:
👉 https://coppinifederico.com/it/

This is where ideas like these become real tools for match performance.

🎾 From mind to court

The same inner skills that create clarity and control under pressure are the ones that win matches.

That’s what we build every day at Coppini Tennis Academy:
👉 https://coppinitennisacademy.com/

Training strokes without training the mind creates weakness.
Training the mind without testing it on court creates fantasy.