There are shots you don’t miss with your racket.
You miss them because you’re playing with a mind full of old weight.
Every time I walked into the garage, that box was there.
Silent.
Heavy.
Watching me.
Full of things I hadn’t used for years.
Objects kept “just in case”.
Memories without a function.
Cables from devices that don’t even exist anymore.
This weekend, I finally opened it.
One object at a time.
Then another box.
And another.
At some point I stopped throwing away junk.
I was creating space.
And while the room was getting bigger, I noticed something strange:
I felt lighter too.
In tennis, the same thing happens.
Only the box isn’t in the garage.
It’s in your head.
Inside you’ll find:
matches you lost years ago
mistakes you’ve replayed a thousand times
sentences someone once told you
“you’re not good enough”
“you can’t handle pressure”
“you’re not a big-match player”
You keep them there “just in case”.
And every time you step on court,
that box is watching you.
Some time ago I read an interesting study.
A group of people were asked to write negative thoughts about their own body.
Half of them were told to tear the paper and throw it away.
The others were told to keep it and reread it.
Those who threw the paper away
felt less influenced by those thoughts.
As if treating thoughts like physical objects
made them easier to let go.
Thoughts have weight.
And in tennis, that weight shows.
It shows:
in the arm that tightens on break point
in the foot that arrives half a second late
in the safe choice when you should attack
You’re not missing technique.
You’re playing with a mind that is too full.
The problem is not having thoughts.
The problem is never throwing away the ones you don’t need anymore.
Many players try to become more solid by adding:
new strokes
new tactics
new advice
But they never remove anything.
They don’t remove:
the match that humiliated them
the judgment that blocked them
the image of themselves that no longer fits
They train the stroke.
But they keep playing with a box on their shoulders.
At some point, while throwing away another useless object, I understood something simple.
Letting go is not deleting the past.
It is choosing what should no longer walk with you onto the court.
Because the mind works like this:
what you keep, weighs.
what you release, creates space.
And without space,
no stroke can ever become truly stable.
So the real question is not how to improve your tennis.
It’s this:
👉 Which thoughts are you still carrying onto the court… even though you no longer need them?
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✍️ 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.