Tennis is one of the few sports in the world that is played on two levels. The first level is the physical level, where players play on the court and engage in a rally of ball exchange to win the point, the game, the set, and finally the match. This game is also the one watched by all those who love tennis and always enjoy a good match between two players with exceptional tennis skills.
The second level is the mental level, where the match is played inside the minds of the players. Tennis has both mental and physical requirements and no one can deny the fact that it is one of the sports where the levels of mental commitment are immense. They are so enormous, that a large part of a match is played in the mind of each player. This game is what we don’t see in a match, but we can sense it from the way the players deal with their opponent and the strategy they employ.
If we could understand this mental game fully, we could also read the players’ moves, make more accurate predictions and perhaps all get rich by betting with one of the best bookmakers in the UK or one of the bet online casinos in France or even the top best online casino of the entire world offering sports wagering. But this is almost impossible since we are talking about one of the most unpredictable and dynamic sports in the world, where the changes in the psychology and minds of the players are frequent and intense.
In tennis, athletes need to be absolutely committed and focused on their game. The ability to isolate their minds, maintain the right psychology, and the stability required to be able to play well, is the number one asset along with talent of course. To see top ATP and WTA tennis players struggling on the court not to get disorganized or distracted so as not to lose their chance to qualify is an all too common phenomenon.
That’s because tennis has a condition that you rarely find in other sports (at least to the extent that it applies to tennis): for the most part, players lose not to their opponent, but to themselves. This means that they often have to confront their own selves as much as they have to confront the player standing on the other side of the court.
Mind games in tennis are nothing new. There are actually quite a few players who use this tactic to improve their own game or weaken their opponent. And since mind games are not prohibited by the codes of conduct of the sport – if, of course, they don’t break any rules – they constitute a potentially effective strategy for many players
It is hard to think that the tennis star Novak Djokovic often plays with the minds of his opponents. But the truth is that he does and he does so, very subtly. Either by pretending that he doesn’t consider his opponent, in an upcoming match, to be particularly formidable – as he did with Nick Kyrgios at the Australian Open in 2022, or by artificially overlooking his opponent’s achievements – as he did with Stefanos Tsitsipas at the Australian Open, when he pretended that he didn’t remember ever meeting him in a Grand Slam final. Notably, Djokovic played Tsitsipas in the 2021 Rolland Garros final, where he lost in the first two sets before turning the match around and taking the title in the end.
And it’s not just Djokovic. Many other players such as Danil Medvedev and Holger Rune have been ‘accused’ of playing with their opponents’ minds at various stages, either by stopping their momentum by taking a bathroom break, by engaging the crowd and the umpire to distract their opponent, or even by provoking their opponent to react and lose their temper.
In general, mind games are very intense in tennis and constitute a tactic that more and more players are adopting lately, aiming to come out victorious in a match that seems to be more difficult if the opponent manages to keep their composure and concentration.
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