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Josh Berger, and in today's episode we are going to be talking about trust and commitment, specifically commitment to a game plan, and we're going to talk about it in a few different ways, a few different sort of levels, I guess we could say. The first being more long-term, thinking about sort of committing to playing maybe a certain way, a certain style, using certain tactics, thinking about how we like to play things like that, even maybe thinking
about our personality. Also, then level two or the next step would be thinking about a match. Okay, what is, how can I commit to playing the way that I want to play going into a match? And then the last piece would be going into a point, sort of that in-between point time, how can we really focus on that trust and commitment piece during that time?
So I think we can start with sort of the long-term piece, thinking about how a player can, yeah, focus on how they want to play in general, more long-term, more thinking about their development, things like that. So Brian, when we start to think about that side of things, the long-term, their long-term development and how maybe trust and commitment to playing a certain way can fit into that, what starts to come to mind for you?
The long-term development piece of this, I think, is important, Josh, because if we all look at our personal histories with the game, we started off very simply maybe being fed some balls and we're hitting the ball and we're evaluating, all right, did it go in? Did I make contact? And so it's very rudimentary, very basic at that level. But pretty soon after, you begin to develop some control. Perhaps you begin to develop some spin, maybe be able to add some power.
Now you can direct the ball in certain places. Perhaps even you begin to develop some accuracy. And what does that do? It allows you now to develop a style of play. It allows you to begin to have some impact on your opponent. So you mentioned Josh, an important part of developing a style of play and learning to trust that is something you enjoy. Now how do we do that? We very often watch players that we like. We see how they play and we may try to emulate that.
So for me growing up, a player that I admired a lot was Bjorn Borg and Bjorn Borg was very consistent. Great clay court player, great mover. A pretty good serve, two handed backhand was one of the first to really incorporate heavy top spin on the forehand. And so I am related a lot of what he did. I wanted to be consistent. I wanted to do a lot of things that Bjorn did. And so maybe just by seeing that and enjoying what he did, that's what I enjoyed doing.
Other players might have, you know, my age gravitated more to, in fact, one of my friends in was more, he really enjoyed watching John McEnroe play and the servant volley style. This guy was right handed, but he liked to serve in volley. He didn't even necessarily have a huge serve, but was great at coming in and looking for opportunities to attack. And that's the way he liked to play the game. So I'm curious, Josh, just, you know, to learn about your career arc.
Who did you perhaps pattern some of your own style after, you know, how did you start to develop a game that you liked and then began to trust? Yeah. So I would say when I started, you know, really developing my game as, you know, sort of as a teenager or even, yeah, sort of in those early teenage years, it was an interesting time. It was really when the Nadal Fetter rivalry was really taking off.
And yeah, what, you know, and Nadal is probably many, many are aware his, his, you know, his playing style arc shifted a lot throughout his career. When he came onto the tour, he was certainly more of a counter-puncher. He would stay far back behind the baseline. He would hit heavy, looping, topspin shots.
And yes, he would attack at times, but he was definitely more of a counter-puncher than he became later on in his, later on in his career where he would, you know, start to attack more and end points, especially with his forehand. But yeah, I would say, I would say I became, you know, more of a counter-puncher, more of a consistent player trying to use topspin more, actually from watching him.
And again, that, you know, as I, as I got more into tennis, started watching other, other players, that started to shift. And you know, later on in my career, you know, I started to recognize that I wanted to be more aggressive. So I started taking more chances, sorry, I started taking more chances, started to go for my shots more.
So I also sort of drifted away from that original playing style, but I would say, you know, as sort of a starting point, the, the dollars playing style actually did have a lot to do with, you know, why I started playing the way that I did. Yeah. And that gives us, I think, a basis for, again, creating intent, right? So as we begin to, you know, develop that, that style, there are different skills that may go into it. And again, we're thinking long-term as players.
We're thinking about becoming the best player that we can become. And I think your reference to Rafa's history starting off more as a counter-puncher, you're the one thing that you could have included in there was his approach to the serve early on, basically just spinning it in. Later on, like, 09, 2010, the serve became much more of a weapon. That was certainly the case when he won his first US Open titles. He was hitting a sort of much bigger than in the past.
Yeah. And so some of that was just incremental, kind of working on it, working on it, working on it. Now it's ready. We can put it into the game plan, et cetera. So having that long-term view of your own game and wanting to develop these skills, I think it's great. We've often discussed the idea of tennis as a life project for you, but you could also look at it as a project that has some specific timelines for things in your game.
So if we begin to translate that, and if you have more points on the big, big level Josh, certainly happy to hear them, but I also want to, you know, as we take a playing style that we have now developed, hopefully, into something. What it actually is a game plan, because I was thinking, all right, we're going to talk about game plan today. What does that even mean? What's a game plan? So at a high level, I feel like a game plan is simply an intent for how you want to play an intention.
And if we think about it as at a very high level, Josh, some players have an intention, some players don't. You know, I think one we want to juxtapose the pros and cons of some of that. So as you begin to develop a style, now you can start to go a little bit deeper and say, how do I intend to play this match? How do I intend to play this opponent? And then of course, you're using your particular style. So I just want to get your sense of that basic definition of a game plan.
And is that something we can work with as we add more specifics to it? I would agree in terms of that as a starting point, in terms of, you know, that intention, that intention, you know, trying to play in a certain way, rather than going to the court and saying, okay, I'm going to figure things out, being able to, yeah, to have a very clear idea about how you want to play. And so, you know, I think that there can be different layers to that.
And I think also that, you know, the difference between a eight year old who's playing in their first tournament and the difference between a 45 year old who's been, you know, playing adult USDA tournaments for many years is going to look a little bit different and it should. But yeah, I think that that really is the starting point. I think that there's, you know, as we think about sort of how we want to play in that intention for how we want to play. I think there's different pieces.
There can be different tactics that, you know, different tactics or patterns or things like that that we want to use. Again, if we think about the pros, we could probably think about specific patterns that they use, that they use effectively.
And, you know, we can do the same as we're thinking, you know, in that sort of way, almost like calling plays or trying to have, you know, a very clear idea for, okay, not only broadly, okay, I want to play more aggressively or more counter punching or come to the net more or less. But specifically, these are some of the things that I would like to do. These are some of the ways that I like to win points. And that I have demonstrated that I can win points in these ways.
So yeah, I think that, you know, again, I think there's, there's different levels to it. But, you know, as a starting point, I think that intention piece is really key. I think that, you know, I think you also want to think about your personality, right?
I think, you know, there's four, four players that are going to play maybe really aggressively, ultra aggressively and take chances and go for shot and take risks and things like that, which some players like to do, you know, does that match their personality. In some way, are they comfortable taking chances and risk or if they're more on the consistent counter puncher side of things, does that match their personality?
So I think it's, you know, and then also thinking about maybe, I don't want to say natural strengths like these are things that we're just born with and that aren't developed. But, you know, can we also think about just strengths of our game, right?
Maybe our, maybe we're, you know, somebody's taller and they happened to have a bigger serve or maybe somebody, it just happens to be really quick around the court or maybe somebody, you know, is able to maybe generate more top spin comfortably or uses the slice really well or, you know, they, they've all been stronger or, you know, or a little bit less comfortable there. So we can also think about as we think about that, you know, sort of how we want to play, I think there's different pieces.
I think part of it is just broadly. Do we, you know, do we want to play more aggressively or more consistently? What are certain tactics we want to use? What are certain strengths and weaknesses and what is our, you know, and how does our personality fit in? So I think there's a number of different pieces that combine in terms of just thinking about, you know, thinking about this topic from more of a long term perspective.
And I think there is another question that needs to be answered about all of this is why. Why do we do this? And I think so again, anecdotally, I work with a lot of, you know, junior players who are good junior players, you know, aspiring division one college, summer division three. And when I talk to them about, though, I ask them, you know, what do you know about directionals? What do you know about certain rules of how you should play? What's a good percentage shot?
What's a low percentage shot? What are the, you know, what are the basic tools and weapons that we have as tennis players? And most of them are seemingly not well educated on this point. And what I think happens more so with our academies and teaching professionals is that they concentrate more on skill development, more how to hit the ball and less on what to do with it. And why?
Ultimately, and we've discussed this on different episodes, but I think we won an episode in particular where we got into this was our conversation with David Samo. And why do we have a game plan? We have a game plan because we are trying to make our opponent uncomfortable physically, mentally, emotionally. That is why you have a game plan. That is why you have a style. It has to bother people. And so we want to be working on it in such a way that we are bothering people.
But at the same time, it's very helpful to know, you know, the, the directional rules that we have discussed, even on this podcast, it's helpful to know, you know, the basic five tools of consistency, directionals, accuracy, spin, power and how they all can be used to make people uncomfortable. So the why part is important. And so when you choose a playing style, you have to know why and how you will make your opponents uncomfortable through this style.
Because if you're unable to make them uncomfortable, and that will happen, you know, right? Like Josh, if you and I were to play, you know, somebody who is a high level division one college player, we're not going to make them uncomfortable. You know, our current skill level is nothing that they haven't seen before. So that's just, you know, because there's such a difference in level.
And so as players, you know, grow into their games, they're going to face matches to have matches in which they don't really make the opponent very uncomfortable just because of experience. But the goal is to get over that and get through that and develop ball quality so that they can. So you know, the reason I'm highlighting this is that you should always know why you're putting something into your game and you should know what purpose it's going to serve you on the court.
And the simpler you can keep it, the better we don't want to have a player who is more of a chameleon who says, oh, well, against this type of player, I'll do this, this type of player, I'll do that because that's not what we see at the elite level. You know, the elite level game plan is somebody taking their strengths and imposing those on the opponent. Very often it's against their weakness, but not always.
Sometimes you'll see somebody exploit a strength, you know, and I was thinking about a doll again. And somebody he really struggled with early on in his career was James Blake. James Blake would attack Rafa's forehand with his forehand. He'd open it up and just hit lasers in there. Now that was great because that's James can do that. And James can move as well as Rafa in terms of chasing balls down. And it was looking at their head to head this morning.
Rafa, you know, James won the first three times twice in straight sets. Rafa won the next four, but never beat Blake in straight sets. James always won a set and he did it by attacking Rafa's strength. So you know, when we talk about strengths, it doesn't have to be against the weakness. It often is, but it often can be, let me break down that player's, you know, better side. So I'm just going to stop there for sec, Josh.
Just get your thoughts on what I've said with respect to purpose and developing the style and having kind of a master plan really for why you're doing this. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that I would add is yes, a big piece of it is, you know, can we make our opponents uncomfortable? Can we, you know, put them in maybe tough positions just like James Blake did for Rafa on the doll? But you know, I think another piece is it can make us feel more comfortable.
It can give us a certain sense of, you know, comfort, certain sense of, I think what it can do when we're really clear about how we want to play is it opens up space for us to focus on other things rather than us second guessing ourselves, getting a short ball and deciding what we want to do with it.
You know, having this big decision making process that keeps having to take place where we're more clear, we're more clear about how we want to play, why we want to play that way and, you know, that doesn't mean that other challenges won't arise, but at least on this aspect of things, it's easier to be, you know, to have clarity about playing style about, you know, how we want to go out there and execute the way that we want to play.
So I think that, yeah, I think it's, you know, I think it's important for us personally. I think it makes it easier for us to play better and to feel comfortable and to be really clear, crystal clear about, you know, how we want to play and, you know, maybe that could even include certain tactics and patterns and things like that. So we can get more granular granular there as well, which, you know, what we'll talk about as well later on.
But yeah, I think it has that impact on us, but also on our opponent. So you talked about some really good benefits of having a game plan, a game style, but I think we can even transition again to the game plan for a match. Yeah, it makes us more comfortable there. I think also you were going here, I believe. So I'm going to take it one step further is when we're playing points, we're not necessarily just evaluating, did I win the point or did I lose the point?
It's really more about the strategy, the game plan and how, how's that doing? What can I do to make it better? Do I just keep going with it, etc? And to me, that leads to better focus in the match down to something a little bit more controllable. And I think that that level of focus allows us to solve problems better. I think we can manage our emotions better and ultimately leading to better performance.
And the commitment part that you brought up earlier kind of with the whole title of this episode is really important. If I think about some of my best performances as a singles player, that commitment was there. Really looking to play a specific way and not letting myself be derailed from that by a few points here and there or even a few games here and there. So that is important. I think what are your thoughts on how one crafts a game plan for a match?
Yeah, I would say I think there's different pieces as well. I think part of it starts from sort of that first level of understanding themselves, understanding what they do well, understanding how they want to play in general, how this player wants to play period. And then I think there's other factors, right? We can think about the opponent. Maybe we've played that opponent before. Maybe we haven't.
Maybe if we haven't, maybe we've heard some things about them or seen a video of them or something like that. So I think it's a combination of understanding yourself and then starting to build an understanding of your opponent. Maybe you played them six months ago and you can think back to their strengths and weaknesses and what worked against them and what didn't work against them. But I think it starts with, yes, sort of that combination of those two pieces.
Again, there may be situations where you're playing somebody and you have no idea how they play, right? But in many cases, you have at least some sense of that. So I think it starts with that really clear understanding of yourself and then moving on to, okay, this is how my opponent plays. This is their strengths and weaknesses.
And then how can I best utilize my game to try to, as you said, Brian, try to make them uncomfortable, but what are maybe some of the specific tactics, specific ways of playing that I can use to be most effective, right? Maybe I hit my forehand really flat, right? Like a James play. Okay, how can I use that to put a lot of pressure on my opponent? Maybe I am great at neutralizing the first server turn. Okay, how can I use that against my opponent?
Maybe I know something about them in order to give myself that little bit of an advantage. As we talked about at the pro level, even the top players in the world, the top number one player, top five and WTA and ATP, only win, let's say, somewhere between 53 and 55% of their points. So we're talking very small margins here between winning and losing. Yes, sometimes there are matches that are 6-0, 6-0, they're rare, but generally at any level, margins are small.
So being able to make small adjustments, being able to be really clear about that game plan going into a match can be the difference maker, right? Just as we talked about different aspects of the mental game being the difference maker, being really clear strategically and tactically about how we want to approach a match and coming up with that game plan can be the difference maker as well.
I think as well, and maybe another piece here, is when it comes to that game plan, that can be a game plan in terms of tactics or strategy. It could also be our mental game plan. Mentally, what am I trying to do out there? Maybe for certain players, it has to do with the routine. Maybe for a particular player, they're still working on building that consistency, as it relates to their routine, which is true for many of the players that I work with and they're somewhere along that process.
So maybe it has to do with that. Maybe it has to do with just being able to reset. Maybe it has to do with the way that they're communicating with themselves out there. So can we come up with a mental game plan? I think with a lot of these things, it's about being more process focused. If we can focus on how we want to play, both, again, big picture, if we can focus on how we want to play going into a match, both physically, this is what I'm trying to do. Mentally, this is how I want to be.
This is what I want to do. If we're thinking in that way, really we are going to be more process focused. We're going to be more process focused, more process oriented, rather than focusing so much on outcomes and results. Thinking I want to win this match, thinking I want to get to the next round of the tournament, thinking that I want to improve my UTR. Or alternatively, I don't want to lose. What are people going to say?
I was just going to impact my UTR negatively or my ranking or WTN or whatever it may be.
I think if we're more game plan focused, again, whatever level that is, whether that's sort of big picture, whether that's going into a match or whether that's between points, if we're thinking in that way, then we're more process oriented, which makes us focus on that rather than focusing on things like outcomes and results, which tends to be beneficial, tends to take some pressure, often tends to help us focus on ultimately what's going to make a difference in terms of winning and losing.
I think you've given us some really good things to think about. Perhaps more practically, how do we do it? I think writing some of this down is helpful. I often use a match worksheet, some of the pre-work that goes into it is process goals. What do we want to do, some game plan reminders and some mental reminders? This just gives us a way of thinking about the match a little bit more deeply than just showing up and responding to whatever happens out there.
That hits all of those points that you were mentioning, Josh. We want to be more process focused. We want to understand our game plan and maybe we can direct it at this opponent. We know what we want to do against this player. Then, what are some mental reminders I want to have? They could be perspectives and mindsets. It could be, I want to make sure I'm using myself to talk out loud between points, things like that.
Taking that time to think about it and then really committing to this is what I'm going to do. I don't want to just write it and then put it aside. We want to make sure that we're embodying this. Another way a player could do this also is to talk to their primary coach or some sort of trusted advisor who knows their game and they just want to talk it through.
I would still like you to take notes on that and then review that going into the match so that we can really prime ourselves to play this way. That's really the reason I think for the discussion and for the journaling or the note taking is it helps to prime ourselves to do this work rather than not.
Because I think if we have a match of two players or two doubles teams and one side of the court has a plan and the other side doesn't, the team with the plan or the person with the plan is almost always going to win. If the level is relatively similar. I'm sure everybody listening can probably reflect on moments where they played with the plan and what that felt like and moments when they didn't. Like you said, Josh, it just makes the whole thing more process oriented than result oriented.
I think that works at the point level also. Really crafting that is important because I mentioned we would kind of compare and contrast not having a plan. I think when you don't have a plan, yes, you become more emotionally tied to the outcome of points. You are now more or less just getting the ball in and seeing what happens. That's not really playing tennis. That's more or less reacting to what somebody else is doing and you can win to a certain point with that.
But your game will stagnate and it won't grow. To me, this is another level of developing your own tennis IQ, your own competitive IQ is to take your skills and then begin to put them into coherent styles of play which then lead to coherent game plans on the court. Then you practice those things and you practice them. The commitment and the trust part is super important because what if you have a tactic that you want to employ? That's the first point of the match. You try it and it doesn't work.
I may have told the story before but I was playing somebody in a match, very fast court, indoor fast court. This guy made the exact right play in the first point. Took my second serve, chipped and charged. That hit a passing shot. One point. That's the right play. It never came back in. Rest in the match. It stayed back. I just had to do one shot. I made one shot and it blew up his entire plan and intention for the day.
We have to deal with that because it's not going to work necessarily every time and you have to deal with the fact that it might not work the first couple of times. But is it the wrong thing to do? It's not so much that I win the point. Is it, did I do the right thing? I did the right thing. Okay, keep doing the right thing. That's the more important part of committing and trusting your game plan.
When you don't commit, then you make decisions based on outcomes like this person I played many, many years ago. I just wanted to throw that out there, Josh, because your use of trust and commitment here is so important when it comes to what we're talking about. Yeah, I think that's a great example because just because something is the right strategy, just because it's the right way of playing doesn't mean it's going to be successful other time. In fact, quite the opposite. It won't.
Just like we talked about this idea of winning right around 50% of points, which you will, or have the best in the world when really no more than 55% of their points, even the right strategy is not going to be successful that much more than half the time. That's okay. You don't need to be winning too, too much more than that. But yeah, I think it takes, at least more than more than one attempt in order to figure out if it is the right strategy for that particular day.
I think it's a balancing act where we want to certainly have a strategy going into a match, but also we want to have options. We want to be able to make adjustments as needed because if we just say, okay, this is the way I want to play. Maybe it's not working on that particular day. Maybe a particular shot isn't working. Maybe we're making way too many unforced errors. I think we want to be able to make certain adjustments.
That doesn't mean completely shifting who we are as a player, but I think it does mean that we are able to make certain adjustments. Maybe that means more spin. Maybe that means a little bit more height over the net. Maybe that means flattening out certain shots if we're used to brushing up on them or hitting with more top spin. Maybe it means that adjustment we need to make is that we need to be a little bit more aggressive, certain points, which is something I've tried.
We're doing and continue to work on looking for opportunities to be more aggressive. I think that there's different pieces here, but I think in general, we want to be able to have certain ideas in terms of how we want to play, but we want to be able to trust it enough that we can give it a chance to work. If we try it that first time and it's not successful and then we give up on it, that's not us trusting it or us committing to that particular play.
If we try it 10 times and we're not successful, any of those attempts or maybe one or two attempts, okay, then maybe we have a little bit more data to work with. So I think it's, again, if it's a completely new tactic that maybe we've never used before it or we haven't used in practice, maybe then we have a little bit less runway where maybe we don't want to keep testing it, keep testing it, see if it might work, where
if it's something that we have used in the past, maybe this particular player is strong at the net, is good at chipping and charging and decided not to keep using it after that attempt, but maybe if they kept trying it, then that could likely be effective. So again, I think it depends on different factors, like how often have you used it in the past, is it something you've been practicing, is it part of your game plan broadly going into a match?
And then in the moment, can you trust it enough to deal with the ups and downs? Can you trust it enough to deal with moments where maybe you didn't execute as well as you wanted to? It reminds me a little bit of a conversation we had with Ryan Harrison, not too long ago, where he talked about this difference between decision errors and execution errors.
Can maybe be thought of in certain ways as good mistakes and bad mistakes, but yeah, I think if you're going about things in the right way, if it's not a decision error, you made the right decision, you just maybe didn't execute, can you give yourself enough time? Maybe it's five attempts, maybe it's 10 attempts, maybe it's a different number. How can you give yourself enough attempts to see, okay, how am I executing on what I'm trying to do here? I've determined that this is how I want to play.
These are some of the tactics I want to use. Okay, how am I actually executing on that? Not those moments where the decision was wrong or I shouldn't have come to net in the first place and then I got passed, but when I made the right decision, is it effective? Am I able to execute this particular tactic effectively? And if the answer is yes, even if I lose some points with it, you should probably keep using it. But if not, okay, then maybe an adjustment needs to be made.
So I think that's maybe a way that we can think about it as well. Yeah, because the first time you use a tactic, maybe it is the right decision, let's take the opponent I was mentioning before. Perhaps he just left the initial approach shot a little bit too much in the middle. Okay. Now, let's all right, the adjustment can be, okay, I need to get it into a corner, maybe I need to get it lower. It's improving the tactic. It's not necessarily abandoning it at a particular moment in time.
It's just trying to make it slowly better and better and better. Again, if it's the thing that you think is going to work the most, right? So let's now move Josh down to kind of the more the micro level, the point, you know, committing to a plan there.
I think you'd be in agreement that when we first teach players the between point routine, more or less using the 16 second cure or kind of the four hours of response, relax, ready, ritual type of stuff, that in there there's a phase for preparing and planning the next point.
And for younger players and for, you know, maybe less experienced players and even for some adult players who have some experience, there can be some hesitation about calling a play, about really committing to doing something. And maybe part of it's just a lack of familiarity, lack of experience. It's not what they're used to doing and so it takes some practice.
And I noticed that, you know, especially with players who haven't had a lot of experience with this managing this time, that that's the phase they struggle with the most is the actual calling of a play or having an intention, some intention for how they want to play the point. And again, as players gain more experience, they hopefully are going from a place of just getting it in to a place of, I want to do this, this and this with the ball. I want to make this is how I want to play.
It's my style. It's how I make people uncomfortable. And so just wanted to get your thoughts on that, Josh, that you, is that something that you also see that players can, can struggle with this notion of calling plays or having a specific plan or intent for points? Definitely, definitely. And yeah, I mean, it's a journey, I would say to get to the point where somebody is able to really use that in between point routine consistently.
And yeah, I think that third piece, sort of that, what Jim Lear has referred to as the preparation stage or ready, if it's the four hours, is challenging. It's definitely challenging. You know, I think for a lot of players, they're not used to it. They're used to playing a point, maybe reacting, maybe not. Maybe they go to the towel and then, okay, time to start that next point. But I think that, yeah, that's missing in terms of, yeah, going, being able to prepare for the next point, right?
I think generally as a good rule of thumb, being able to plan out how you want to start the point in terms of those first two shots. So maybe that's my serve and my serve in my serve plus one or return and return plus one. So maybe I want to serving on the do side. I want to serve out wide and then I want to try to set up my forehand to hit into the opposite corner, something like that.
A lot easier to set up the first, your own first two shots rather than thinking about what a 10, 15 shot rally could look like. Not really possible to plan that far ahead because obviously you have an opponent on the other side of the net. So I would agree that that peace is sometimes forgotten. I also think that that first piece actually, and I think there's a little bit more to that first piece in terms of, you know, sort of moving on from that last point.
But I think sometimes that peace, if it's not thought about, can also be quite problematic because I think that tends to lead to people maybe reacting or yelling at themselves or, you know, throwing the racket or things like that, when we can't have a way to process, when we don't have a way to process what happened in that last point.
But I think, yeah, as it relates to this topic for today, that third piece in terms of preparing for that next point, being ready for how we want to play that next point, it really has everything to do with this. It really is about, can we have a game plan? Can we, yeah, can we be really clear about what we're trying to do? Can we, a word that you used earlier, Brian, do we have an intention? Do we have a clear intention for what we want to do in this next point? What we're trying to execute?
Now again, we're not going to execute that every time, we're not going to be successful every time. Sometimes we're going to, you know, let's, if we're sticking with that, serve out wide on the do side example.
Sometimes we're going to serve out wide to the do side, and then our opponent is going to, you know, last ball right down the line, and rather than being able to set up our forehand as we had sort of planned or intended, we're going to have to, you know, hit a backhand if we're right handed. We're going to have to maybe play some defense. So yes, we had that clear intention there, but yes, it didn't, but ultimately it didn't end up turning out that way.
And that's going to happen sometimes as well. But I think, again, if we're thinking about the percentages, the likelihood of us being able to capitalize, you know, to play a, to play a point in a, you know, in a, in a beneficial way compared to not being able to do that based on having that intention or, you know, or not really going in with that intention. I think is a huge difference.
So I think as we talk about this, you know, point to point time in terms of trust and commitment I think that's, you know, I think that's really key. You mentioned, you know, some ways that the, the plan could manifest itself, serve plus one, return plus one or plus two on those things.
It could be about a pattern of play that I want to use in this particular point or maybe it's just an intention of keeping them all high, keeping it low, moving a player coast to coast, those types of things, right? So those are ways to get it down to a specific plan for this, this point. I think this is a specially important in doubles. I'm sure a lot of people listening are play a lot of doubles and, you know, people may have different philosophies on this.
You know, some people like to communicate, some people are okay with it, some people are not so good with it. To me, and if we watch the pros on both ATP and WTA tour, you see lots of communication, lots of talking going on. And I know from a personal perspective, some of my favorite doubles matches, and I won't say that I'm necessarily the greatest doubles player, but some of my favorite doubles matches over the last 20, 25 years have included point by point communication.
Every point and me and my partner were on the same page and we're talking things through and it's always about what are we doing next? We're rarely ruminating on what just happened and why it happened and what are we going to do? How are we going to fix this? It's always about what's next. And by that level of thinking, we're always keeping ourselves in the match. We're staying focused. Again, we're managing our emotions better and we're more likely to have a good performance.
So I think it's super important to do this in doubles. Maybe if you're playing with somebody who's into it, maybe easier to do than it is in singles. Singles, you're not letting anybody down. Why not calling a play? Well, you're kind of letting yourself down. You're not letting somebody else down. And so this is I think a real good skill for people to practice, play a practice match in which you simply try to have a play on every point.
You may find that you get to maybe 70, 80% of the time, but what was different about those 70% points versus the 30% of points? What are you noticing? What kinds of plays work for you? Now, a lot of times, the things that we mentioned are really more geared toward your playstyle. So surplus one is going to be really for players who are more first strike or more aggressive or there might even be certain volley.
That could be a tactic that you use on certain points where patterns of play might be more counter-punchers or consistent bass liners. We're looking to grind in some way. So a lot of the point by point intentions are really, they should be consistent with the overall game plan, which the overall game plan should be consistent with the long-term style of play we're trying to develop. But ultimately, it's going to manifest itself into what you do point by point.
And I think when we have that level of focus, Josh, again, we're focusing more on process and not as much on did I win or lose the point and you can move on more easily from these things. So I can't, to me, emphasize enough about trusting and really committing to developing these skills relative to game plans and planning out your points. Absolutely. And I think part of trust is, yeah, that understanding that it's not going to work out of your time. And that's okay.
But part of it is, yeah, that willingness to keep going back to it. And that doesn't mean that over a long period of time, it's not working that you can't or shouldn't make an adjustment because you should, but at least being able to give it the time to potentially, so that potentially does work. So you're giving yourself a chance.
But yeah, no, I think that, again, the difference between trusting and committing to a game plan versus being maybe a little bit wishy-washy about it cannot be overstated. And I think, again, with the small margins of tennis, it can often be the difference between between winning and losing, but I think even more so, just between playing the way that you want to play and the way that you're going to leave the court feeling proud of how you played and not.
And ultimately, that's what we're trying to do. We can't guarantee results, but we can at least give ourselves a better chance to feel proud of our performance, to feel like we put ourselves in a winning position. And I think that, maybe as we start to wrap things up a little bit, I think that trusting commitment can do that. I think it can give us a better chance to both put ourselves in a winning position and give ourselves a greater likelihood to be successful because we are fully bought in.
We're fully bought in. We're fully committed to what we're trying to execute in that moment. There's not that, you know, we're not leaving that space open for second guessing. We're not leaving that space open for, you know, ruminating. We're not leaving that space open for letting our mind go in all different directions. We're clear about what we're trying to do.
Whether that's, again, more long-term going into a match or, you know, during a match between points where I think that clarity can really make all the difference. And I think another difference, Josh, is, you know, where we're trying to create something here, right? We're kind of more focused on creating than we are on maybe fixing things or reacting to things.
And I personally, I mean, this is an edge case, but I'd rather see somebody be really committed to a game plan and not have it work, but stay committed to it. And we learn from what that was versus being kind of all over the place, you know, or a little wishy washy. We're just reacting to things and maybe they even win that way.
But I think the more that we're thinking about long-term development and looking at game plans and committing to them and really trying to make them work, that in itself is a skill that we want to, I think, foster more. Because again, we're trying to create opportunities through what we're doing. And the more you practice creating opportunities, and that probably takes some courage as well, great virtue for all of us as tennis players.
But the more you're trying to create opportunities, the more in the future will come. But if you never really practice creating opportunities, they're not going to just magically appear one day because all of a sudden you're four hands bigger. So that in itself I think is something to focus on. Any final thoughts? No, I think we've, you know, I think we've pretty much covered it.
I think there's, yeah, I think we've pretty much covered sort of those three main points, you know, and I know we've said it before, but you know, always happy to hear from people. But we have people that will, you know, reach out to us, send us an email, you know, kind of site, queue podcast at gmail.com, and you can always feel free to do that. Tell us about something.
Maybe your experiences, times maybe where you've really trusted your game, really committed to playing a certain way, again, either more long term or short term or on the other side, maybe moments where you haven't as much. And also, you know, if you have certain questions, maybe certain ideas for other episodes, always feel free to reach out because, you know, we've come up with certain, you know, certain episode topic ideas from, you know, from people's feedback or from people's ideas.
So always feel free to reach out. Great. Well, that's our show for today. Thank you all for listening for more on today's episode. Please check out the show notes. And as Josh mentioned, if you have feedback or questions, please email us at tennis.icube podcast at gmail.com. Also, if you're enjoying the content that Josh and I discuss on the show, please rate and review the podcast. So other tennis enthusiasts can find it more easily.
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