Maintaining a Lead

How to keep focus after winning the first set. It was just minutes ago that you won a hard-fought first set 6-4. Now you’re down an early break in the second. You’re starting to tighten up, and you feel as if you’re losing the match even though you’re ahead on the scoreboard. The momentum should be on your side, but it’s slipping away. You ask yourself what happened. This scenario plays out time and again at all levels of the game. Why? It’s in our nature to escape the un-pleasant feeling of excessive stress. In a close tennis match the stress on the player in the lead increases as he progresses toward the conclusion of a set and, ultimately, the match. After winning a difficult, tense set there’s often a conflict between your logical mind, which tells you to keep applying pres-sure and close out the match, and your subconscious mind, which suggests that you temporarily escape all this stress by easing up and taking a well-deserved mental break. With a set under your belt, now feels like as good a time as any. Big mistake. On the other side of the net, your opponent knows that he has to bear down or he’ll soon be leaving the court a loser. So he tends to maintain or increase his intensity level. Couple that with your own tendency to let up at this stage and there’s a momentum change just waiting to happen. How do you prevent it? In this situation, forewarned is forearmed. If you win the first set, take a few moments to collect yourself and pump yourself up. Then redouble your efforts at the start of the second set. It often helps to play games with your mind. Try to convince yourself that the match is starting over and that you have to jump out to an early lead. Be even more aggressive, resolute, and focused than you were in the first set. Concentrate on each point to minimize your errors and show your opponent that he’s in for a long and painful afternoon if he wants to win. Your opponent, trailing in the match, may be on the brink of despair. Your immediate objective should be to break his spirit by being tough. Don’t let him back into the match. Remember that your opponent is looking for some sign of weakness on your part to convince him that the first set was a fluke. If you let up even the slightest bit, you might give him hope. As the second set begins, keep the door shut—or, better still, slam it on your opponent’s foot.