How To Regain Momentum In Tennis So That You Win More Matches

In every tennis match, there are going to be numerous momentum shifts throughout. They can dictate how players feel, think, and play.  With the scoring system in tennis, a 10% shift in points could be the difference between a set you lose badly to a set you dominate score-line wise.  Therefore, being able to identify where the momentum lies and being able to think clearly and act accordingly can help decide the outcome of matches. 

How many times have you heard a player say, “I can’t believe I have lost that set 6-0, every game went to 30-all but I lost all of them”, or “when I win the 1^st set but lose the 2^nd, I always lose the 3^rd”? Personally, I have heard these kinds of things a lot, and sometimes players dwell on these thoughts, causing them to doubt themselves in future situations. Eventually, this becomes a common thought pattern for them, they become so used to thinking this way they just accept it’s going to happen again without doing anything about it. I call these bad habits.

To me, this is the by-product of negative momentum. When a match is turning against you, or if you have lost a string of points in a row, you start to think oh well, it’s happening again. You carry on as if it’s normal, and no wonder it keeps happening. 

Ask yourself this, if you don’t want something that happens regularly to happen again, does it make sense for you to keep doing the same thing? I certainly wouldn’t! There is a great example of this from Rafa Nadal’s post match conference after he beat Daniil Medvedev in the 2022 Australian Open final. Against Medvedev, he was a break up in the 5^th set but got broken when serving for the championship, which reminded him of the times when he was also in the same situation, being a break up in the 5^th set of the 2012 and 2017 Australian final, before losing to Djokovic and Federer respectively. Upon realising this, he was able to stop thinking about that and chose to tell himself that he has to do something different, he needs to believe it’s going to be different this time, and changed his game plan accordingly, before finally winning the match. 

This shows the importance of being able to recognise the situation you are in and where the momentum is, before having the ability to think clearly about what your intentions are. For example, I’ve seen a lot of players rush when they’re in a losing position, probably trying to win the next point as quickly as possible, or they just want to get it over and done with. However, you should be doing the opposite. When you’re in a losing position and the momentum is against you, you should be slowing things down. This way, you have time to analyse the situation, regroup, and come up with solutions.