By Luke Jensen, French Open Doubles Champion
Tennis stars, the weather is cooling down and the hot summer tennis season has passed. It’s a really good time to recalibrate your goals for the game to where you feel you can enjoy the sport more and find more success. In my professional playing days, I found the fall was always a time where I was fit and confident with my game because the tour was being hosted at glorious locations.
When fall came around, the tour moved indoors and the weather turned bad. The indoor season presented challenges, so I would use that time to work on areas of my game that was letting me down under pressure. One year specifically, I set a goal to improve my return of serve by studying video of what I was doing and comparing that to what the best returners were doing differently.
This kept me engaged and focused on development instead of results. Most of the time, the fall produced solid results because areas that let me down would improve. I recommend the same for your growth as a player. These are not massive changes but just little tweaks that won’t require a technical “root canal” on your game. Talk to your coach or teammates to see where they feel you could improve. It was easy for me because my brother, Murphy, is always direct and the better I played the more we won as a doubles team — which meant he made more money!
I’m a big fan of developing a growth mindset to anything you face in life. Your tennis is no exception. Be honest regarding where it needs to go and find answers in the world around you. For me, sometimes it was a racquet or string change. The bottom line is to keep evolving and leaning into why the game is fun for you no matter what the result is at the end of the match. I really enjoy the challenge the game provides sometimes simply to hit a better ball on the day, all the way to enjoying the people I’ve met through tennis.
Until next time, keep going for winners!
