REAL IMPROVEMENT BEGINS WHEN OBSERVATION REPLACES JUDGMENT
There is one sentence I hear over and over again at junior tournaments.
“My forehand just wasn’t there today.”
“My backhand wasn’t working.”
“I couldn’t feel the ball.”
These are perfectly normal things to say. Young players say them. Adults say them. Even high-level players use these phrases when they’re frustrated.
But they all share the same problem.
They explain nothing.
They describe a feeling, not what actually happened on the court.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working with a young competitive player. After every match or practice session, she sends me a message describing what she experienced. At first, her reflections sounded like those of many other players:
“My forehand wasn’t working.”
“I couldn’t hit through the ball.”
“I just played badly.”
Then, almost without realizing it, something changed.
After one practice session she wrote:
“The heavy balls kept landing short, and on my finishing shots I was contacting the ball too far behind me.”
For most people, that might sound like a simple technical observation.
For me, it was evidence that the way she thought about tennis was changing.
She was no longer describing a feeling.
She was describing an observation.
And that is a huge difference.
The player who isn’t improving says:
“It just wasn’t working today.”
The player who is starting to improve says:
“I kept contacting the ball too far behind me.”
The first response is a judgment.
The second is information.
And improvement is always built on information.
One of the biggest mistakes players make is believing that analyzing a match means deciding whether they played well or badly.
In reality, that’s one of the least useful forms of analysis.
“I played badly.”
It tells you nothing.
“I had no confidence.”
That doesn’t help much either.
Your brain cannot build solutions from vague labels.
It needs details.
It needs patterns.
It needs to understand what happened, when it happened, and why it happened.
Imagine a doctor.
No doctor would examine a patient and simply conclude,
“You’re sick.”
They would look for symptoms.
They would search for patterns.
They would investigate causes.
A tennis player should learn to approach their own game in exactly the same way.
Every mistake contains information.
But only if you’re willing to look for it.
When a player says,
“I kept contacting the ball behind my body.”
they’ve already taken a major step forward.
They’ve transformed a feeling into an observation.
But the process shouldn’t stop there.
Every observation should naturally lead to another question.
When did it start?
Did it happen on every ball, or only on heavy topspin shots?
Was it a timing issue?
A spacing issue?
A preparation issue?
A tactical decision?
Those questions completely change the way you experience a match.
Instead of becoming the victim of your feelings, you become the investigator of your own performance.
And that’s exactly what professional players do.
Many people think elite athletes spend most of their time trying to stay motivated.
In reality, they spend much of every match collecting information.
Every point tells them something.
Every game confirms or rejects an idea.
Every set provides another piece of evidence.
The match becomes a laboratory.
They don’t wait until the end to understand what went wrong.
They’re learning while they’re still competing.
That ability also transforms the way they experience mistakes.
Mistakes stop being personal failures.
They become feedback.
If a player misses three backhands into the net, they don’t immediately think,
“My backhand is off today.”
Instead, they ask,
“What do these three mistakes have in common?”
That single question is far more powerful.
Because every answer creates an opportunity to adjust.
And that is one of the defining characteristics of high-level tennis.
The best players don’t necessarily make fewer mistakes.
Very often, they simply understand their mistakes sooner.
They recognize patterns earlier.
They adjust one game before their opponent does.
They observe better.
And observation is a skill that can be trained every single day.
You don’t have to play at Wimbledon to develop it.
You simply have to become more curious than judgmental.
Because judgment closes the conversation.
Observation opens it.
THE FOUR-QUESTION REVIEW PROTOCOL
After every practice session or match, resist the temptation to write:
“I played well.”
or
“I played badly.”
Instead, take out a notebook and answer these four questions:
-
What was the most difficult situation I faced today?
-
What exactly did I observe, without interpreting it?
-
When did the problem first appear?
-
What is the very first adjustment I will test in my next practice?
At first, this exercise may seem simple.
But after several weeks, you’ll notice something remarkable.
Your observations will become more precise.
And as your observations become more precise, your solutions become more effective.
Because tennis doesn’t improve when you become better at judging yourself.
It improves when you become better at observing yourself.
So perhaps the real question isn’t whether you played well today.
The real question is this: when something isn’t working, are you simply describing a feeling… or are you collecting the information that will help you become a better player?
Federico Coppini
Mental Performance Coach & Tennis Coach
Founder – Coppini Tennis Academy
🎾 https://www.coppinitennisacademy.com
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