There comes a moment when you start telling yourself that you need to play well. Not just play, but play “properly,” play “clean,” play “the right way.” At first, it feels like a positive intention, almost like professionalism. You want to express your level, you want to do things correctly, you want to prove—to yourself and to others—that you belong there. But this is exactly where the problem begins, because the moment you start trying to play well, you stop truly playing. You enter a dimension where the quality of the shot becomes more important than the reality of the point, and that shift changes everything about your presence on court.
The transition is subtle but destructive. You are no longer oriented toward the ball, the situation, or the decision. You are oriented toward an image of how you should be playing. You start chasing the “right shot” instead of the effective solution. You want to feel the perfect contact, see the correct trajectory, confirm that you are playing as you should. You are no longer reacting to the game, you are chasing an internal standard. And every time you do that, you introduce tension, because your focus is no longer on action, but on judgment.
This creates a very precise mechanism. If the shot comes out well, you feel a brief sense of relief, almost validation. But if it doesn’t match your expectation, frustration appears immediately, even if it’s subtle. You start correcting, adjusting, interfering. You try to fix the movement, to control more, to “do better” on the next point. You enter a loop where every shot becomes a test, not an action. And when you are being tested, you are never truly free.
The paradox is that this search for quality actually reduces the real quality of your game. Tennis works when you are inside the action, not when you are evaluating it while performing it. A shot comes out naturally when it is a response, not when it is a demonstration. The more you try to play well, the more you interfere with what you already know how to do. It’s like trying to control something that only works when you let it happen.
Think about the moments when you’ve played your best tennis. Those times when everything felt fluid, natural, almost effortless. In those moments, you were not trying to play well. You were simply playing. Decisions came faster, your body reacted without hesitation, the ball left your racket without needing to be controlled. Then, as soon as the situation becomes important, something shifts. The need to perform, to not waste the opportunity, to prove something appears. And right there, you lose the natural flow that allowed you to play at your level.
Top players are not the ones who constantly try to play well. They are the ones who can keep playing even when they don’t feel perfect. They accept that the shot will not always feel right, that the sensation will not always be ideal. But they stay inside the point. They keep choosing, reacting, building. They don’t chase perfect execution, they pursue effective action. And that is what makes them far more stable over time.
The solution is not to lower your level or “settle.” It is to completely shift your focus. You need to move from “playing well” to “playing the point.” It sounds like a small difference, but it changes everything. When you play the point, every shot has a purpose, a direction, a role. It is no longer a judgment about you, but a decision within the situation. You remove the weight from the shot and place it back into the game.
A very concrete exercise is this: during practice or a match, every time you notice the thought “I need to play well,” replace it with a simple question: “what is needed right now?” Not as a concept, but as an immediate action. Do you need depth? Direction? Time? This shifts you out of judgment and into function. It brings you back to the real game—the one that actually exists.
The final truth is that you don’t play badly because you lack ability. You play badly because you are trying to prove something when you should simply be executing. You are playing to confirm yourself instead of playing the point. And as long as you stay in that dynamic, your level will always be unstable, because it will depend on how “right” you feel in that moment. When you return to the point, your game becomes much more solid, because it stops being a judgment and becomes action again.
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Federico Coppini
Mental Coach & Tennis Coach
Founder – Coppini Tennis Academy
🎾 https://www.coppinitennisacademy.com