The Essence is One, the Paths are Many
The style of play in tennis is like a garment that both animates and is animated by its wearer.
Each player possesses a unique style, a capacity for action, a physicality (understood as aesthetic form), a corporeality (understood as the perception of one’s own body), a personality, and a psycho-emotional inner sphere; in short, a series of characteristics that make them unique.
In a sense, the coach is like a tailor: the better they are at understanding their athlete, with their needs, desires, character, physical type, and experiences, the more capable they are of tailoring a garment that minimizes flaws and enhances strengths, valorizing their individuality.
The same outfit cannot suit two different people equally.
Even when it may seem similar to another, it will always need some small adjustment or modification depending on who will wear it.
The style of play is like a garment that is gradually created over time, completed parallel to the athlete’s psycho-physical and technical evolution.
It all starts with the player, with what they feel best “wearing”, what they believe fits most comfortably, mediated by the coach, who by observing and deepening their knowledge day by day, suggests one model over another or parts of different models to integrate or assemble into a whole, a single piece.
The outfit (the style of play) animates and lives in the one who wears it, reflecting and enhancing the way the person (the player) is and expresses themselves.
The player brings with them their entire baggage (their “outfit”) of physical and inner elements every time they step onto the court, from which they try to draw solutions to the problems they face in the game. The technical and tactical possibilities at their disposal are potentially infinite, but strongly interrelated with the choices made by the opponent, external to them, in a sort of “give and take” where one depends on the other and vice versa.
This is why it is difficult to quantify the mental and emotional reactions of each individual relative to the rapid and continuous decisions that need to be made from moment to moment, ball by ball, with all its implications.
Just as consciousness, if free from prejudices and constraints, intuitively knows which path to take and in which direction to direct and channel energy, so the player, if free to express themselves, is capable of implementing action plans that are sometimes unusual but effective (earning them points in a match) and framed within a natural order, a flow of events (the sequences of points, games, sets) that is perhaps only explainable at the end of play.
From the final considerations (at the end of a point) on one of the paths taken (the game tactic employed), starting from the initial core (each stroke) a new center, another core (each point) arises, from which branch out other different paths to undertake or directions to choose (strategies).
The clarity of reason is necessary at the initial choice in setting the strategy and at times during the journey when it needs to be changed or adapted to circumstances.
For the rest… let your inner voice, your essence, guide you.
In short, sometimes, especially if and when you feel “bundled up” mentally and/or emotionally, don’t think… just play! And that’s it!