Be a good doubles partner to yourself as a singles player
What is one sign of a winner, a champion? This includes athletes or “players” in life. I have written in brief about grit being one of, if not the most important, feature but obviously love for what one is doing and passion are key. Yet here is one that I have suggested players do when they are playing singles: Be a good doubles partner to yourself. And I suggest tennis players (athletes in general, etc) should spin it like a politician. By that I mean they just take the same principle that routinely occurs in politics such that when both sides (or more) are describing, reacting to, etc., the same set of data, the same phenomena they come up with different perspectives. I will mete this out more below. But first, why do I say that and what does it look like to be a good doubles player to yourself?
Being a good dubs partner
Whether you play doubles at a high level or not, the most enjoyable part of doubles is playing with someone your really like being with. Perhaps you can come up with a plethora of descriptors as to what this like for you, but I have a few here to start the list. It is fun. There is no pressure. You support each other and that loosens you up to play better. Good partners say “Nice try” when you mess up and not give you the sigh or frown emoji in real time. They get fired up with you when you do something well and calm you down when you get too amped. They help you think through good plans, and talk you out of bad ones. Two minds are better than one when you enjoy playing with a particular person. And in truth, a truly united and highly unified team, what we normally call having great chemistry, has two players that actually think like one person and know what each other is going to do. Good doubles teams have good energy, and if one is down, sick or flat, the other one picks you up. And here is a kicker. This is one of the biggest keys in sports really. Here it is. Are you ready? Great doubles partners, while they know you stunk it up on the court, will take the blame! They will take the hit especially when talking to others. So great doubles teams end up having two players, when asked what happened when they lost, take the blame even if one player was playing the best match of their life. And an addendum to that kicker is this. Are you ready? Great doubles teams, when they win, have both players saying the other person played great, so you have two people complimenting each other. How fun is that!?
I can go on describing ways this looks for winning and losing teams (with great chemistry) as well as ways it looks for teams with poor chemistry, win or lose. And while it is true that you learn what to do from the “what not to do” the focus above and below is more on what to do and you can figure out most of the what not to do. Most people are pretty intuitive when they do not like something. It is tantamount to knowing what a $100 bill looks like, feels like, etc. (not like I have any), you can spot a counterfeit pretty easily. Same here with spotting what you feel is fun doubles, good chemistry doubles.
Let me tell you two stories. The first one is about what empowering eachother in doubles allows your partner to do without feeling additional pressure that naturally comes from the game. It is a good tale but needs background. When I was coaching in Southern California we had a player that was top 5 in the USTA (Carlos Bustos) and played about 4 for us at top 16 NCAA team, UC Irvine. He was a beast on the court. To give you an idea of his (and the team’s grit), at that time we were playing a top 20 NCAA team at home and we had 8 players with 3 of them injured. If you do the math we should not have won that match. Other players we had that were amazing were Chris Tontz (top 25 NCAA who went on to be top 500ATP and coaches the top junior in the world), Fredrick Bach (#2 Norwegian player and one of the most beautiful players on court to watch, just an amazing player), Marc Tardif (#1 Canadian), Julian Foxon, a feisty Brit who walked on as a freshman but just ended up being one of the most annoying and difficult lefties to play in the region, then Carlos at #4. I do not fully recall all who was injured but we basically defaulted the 3rd doubles and #6 singles. After doubles we needed everyone to battle. Fred was injured, Carlos had really bad knees and wasn’t going to play, etc. That was the end. But he got motivated to play (I won’t go into that but it was humorous at the time) and here is the point. That team had grit. The last two matches are telling. Julian, with a torn stomach muscle, served under hand in the third set to win, and Carlos, barely being able to move won his match in three sets. Fred had won his I think and was walking around in plastic ice bags already. We won the match 5-4 (it was different scoring then). Needles to say we won the match but most of the guys, even Kenny Cruz and Cameran Lindee were pretty banged up.
So now to the doubles point. Carlos and I played Wimbledon West in Orange County that year. It was one of the biggest doubles tournaments in the OC. Former touring pros and some just off the professional tour played it as well as many former collegiate players (from UC Irvine, USC, UCLA etc). The draw was loaded. Carlos and I won the semifinals against a former alumn and a former World #1 so that was sweet. Then the finals. We had our backs against the wall against two players that had just played some pro ball. It was Carlos’s return on the deuce side (I always play ad) and he said, “Coach, I got this.” I knew what he meant and I was fine with it. He ripped the cover off the return and we broke them and eventually won the match. The point. I trusted his grit, he knew I trust him and that freed him to go after what he was capable. If we had lost the point and the match I would have felt he and I gave it our best. That is key in playing freely.
The second story is much shorter but extremely apropos. Another former player and I teamed up for the Southern Californian Open Sectionals and went undefeated for the year. Julian Barham, played on tour a bit, and had the sweetest touch I had seen. He could just “yank guys chains” all over the court. He was the deuce side finesse I was the ad side henchman. He sliced his serve on a dime and vollied his way to net on serve while I pounded scuds and crashed the net. We were great duo of opposites He was calm, I was fired up. He was chill off the court, I would pace.
One match we were the #1 seeds and the opponents were even more opposite than we were. One guy we thought for sure was a descendant from the Philistines–a relative of Goliath. A massive guy with an accompanying ballistic serve. The other guy was short and bothersome like a gnat. Running all over the place. We were losing. Undefeated was on the chopping block. Here is the lesson. Julian and I were sitting on our bench at the changeover and he was lamenting on how he was sick (and he looked like the walking dead) and how some other things were not going so well off court. He knew I thought he was an amazing player, that I had his back and I trusted whatever he did. We communicated well, we planned well, we compensated well for each other’s off days etc. But this was going nowhere fast. So I said to him, and I am paraphrasing: “Julian, I know you feel like crud, you have a ton of stuff on your mind and it is just lousy. But I will tell you this. You think you feel lousy about all that, you will feel even worse on your long drive home, still feeling sick, still thinking of those other things if we lose this match that you know we should not. If we muster this up and win it you will a much happier camper on the way home and we remain undefeated etc.” Needless to say, while sometimes as a coach, or friend, what you say can backfire, this did not. He was on fire and we won the match. That was special.
As a singles player
Now, transfer the above principles to yourself, how you talk to yourself in singles, how you manage your between court time after each point. The battle is fun as a whole, but sometimes as a singles player, without your doubles partner there to fire you up or loosen you up with a comment or even a joke (yes, telling a quick joke or comment is really helpful), you get bogged down in the mire of bad shots or low energy.
So, after every point do PRPR. I will go into this in depth some other time but in short, Have a Positive physical response. No moping, no slumping, etc. If you had a doubles partner on court pick you up emotionally they would say, “that’s ok, that was the right shot. Let’s get the next one.” So do that to yourself. The Aussies call it having a walk-about. You can give yourself a quick positive instruction like “no need to go for so much,” or “right place just a bit more shape,” etc. And if you win the point, give yourself kudos but keep energy in check. Use it to your advantage. Next you need to Relax. Walk a bit and get your energy up if low, or get it down if too amped. Having a doubles partner to talk with can do this, but you need to talk to yourself (out loud or not is fine–I talk to myself all the time and my kids think I am losing it). Third, Preparation. You have to tell yourself what the plan is next. No one else can. You don’t have a doubles partner and make sure you make it simple: “Spin the first serve in to the backhand and if it is short and center I am redirecting that sucker…!” Lastly, Ritual. You have to have a ritual on your serve and return. Great doubles teams do all this between points, coming together each time etc. Do it for yourself in singles. Don’t worry if folks are saying “Hey who is she talking to?” or “Wow, he is sure calm after that miss.” Think about it, if you play like you have a doubles partner on your side that is like two against one! Nice odds.
Spin it like a politician
To finish this up, I said I would mete out what I mean by spin it like a politician. As observers, if you are either skeptical, neutral, or trying to be as objective as possible when listening to politicians of sorts, you might see two politicians reading the same statistics, having read the same text, etc. but coming up with two entirely different responses. Those responses are informed, shaped by, or seen through different lenses. Forget that in many cases one is in fact incorrect or less informed (pick your party, I don’t care), but my point is this. Politicians, to a fault, are notorious for evading the question, rewording things to make their case or themselves come out smelling like a rose and in short, just being like Teflon (where even the worst about them doesn’t stick) or like a sponge (when all the good stuff just gets absorbed into their public relations pieces). So in tennis, if you miss the shot, to the successful player it is just that, a missed shot. No big deal. They find a way to spin it: “Right idea, I just need to take a little off the pace” when everyone watching is thinking–yikes. Or “My opponent may have a great forehand, serve, volley and return (sounds like the average player is doomed) but I have grit and I think I can make her forehand breakdown if I can just keep the point going longer.” Or how about this one, Allen Fox (buy and read his books in my resource section) masterfully told himself when he was woefully behind, “Hey I can use this opportunity to see how mentally tough I am and try and come back and beat this guy.” And lastly, an example form the 2018 Austrian Open up-and-coming Chung. When asked after the match what he was thinking when he was up 3-0 in the third set tiebreaker (only 4 points from winning the match) only to lose three straight points to make it 3-3, he said in effect “Well, if I lose this I am still up two sets to one and am pretty young so I can run around a lot.” Someone who is not a good doubles partner to themselves or doesn’t spin it like a politician might say, “Oh no, I have lost the momentum and I am in trouble” when in reality they are nowhere near in trouble as Chung spun it.
Go have a great doubles match while you play singles–be a good doubles partner to yourself. And regardless if you don’t get a warm up, your are down in a match, or your last racquet just snapped a string and all you have is a ping pong paddle to play with, see each situation in the best light possible and to your advantage some way. Spin it like a politician.
Let ‘er Rip
Steve