Preparation for a Tournament By By Gilad Gilad Bloom Bloom
ne of the biggest challenges of a tennis player is to compete at a high level in an official tournament match. Often there is a big drop, and the things that looked simple in practice at the local club all-week become harder. It seems to be more difficult when you play a Friday night match on court 23 in a remote bubbled facility, after a full-day of school, and against a solid opponent who is out to get you and fist pumping after every point that he wins. Coaching isn't allowed during the match and having a coach at a tournament is a luxury for most junior players. Once the match starts, players are basically on their own. Clearly nerves are a huge part of the level drop, after all the ability to bring out the best version of your tennis to each match is the secret of this game, the great champions have a natural gift for being calm during tight situations and have the ability to close out matches in a clinical way; essentially, they play the match the same way they do in practice. It is one thing to have nice strokes and a good game, but another thing to actually execute the plan during a match, it takes not only calmness, but also preparation, and that starts way before the day of the actual match. Once a tennis match starts there is no telling how it will end, a player can't control the court conditions or the opponent's style, bad calls or bad
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weather. Junior matches are often filled with rollercoaster lead swings and drama, often there is more than one match a day and many factors come into the picture. The most a player can do is to try to control only the things you can control. The preparation starts, of course, the week before the event, playing a lot of practice sets and creating tight match situations in practice (start games at 1530 or break point down). It is also important to take it easy on the fitness sessions on the days prior to the tournament, you are not going to get in shape in three days, it is more beneficial to let the body arrive to the matches fresh and ready to go deep in the tournament. On the night before the tournament it is time to start getting specific. Find out your match time, book a practice court, find a good hitting partner in advance, book an early dinner with good healthy food and, most importantly, get a good night’s sleep. It is highly recommended to prepare the bag the night before and double check that you have all the things that you'll need ready and packed in the bag, the idea is to get to the day of the match with as few distractions as possible. That means you should have your favorite racquet freshly strung and gripped, make sure you have spare grips and strings, sweatbands, towels, extra
New York Tennis Magazine • March/April 2022 • NYTennisMag.com
shirts and shorts and energy drinks and bars, the night before! On the day of the match, a nutritious breakfast is a must and a proper physical warm up close to the time of the match is required. Often players warm up hours before the match then sit for a few hours, but there must be a good warm up right before the match. You need to go to the match already sweating a bit. Remember, 75 percent of the time, the winner of the match is the one who wins the first set, so you can't afford a slow start if you are going to go deep in the tournament. If you're going to win the tournament, every point counts. Scouting is obviously important. Knowing some basic information about your opponent can help, however if it's a new unknown opponent you should use the warm up to check out tendencies such as if the player runs around the backhand or if they are using the wrong grip in the volley. Also, try to sneak in a few returns on their serve during the warm-up, you can learn a lot from those small things. As far as the strategy going into the match, it is of course specific to each player and their style, but going into the match a player should have a certain game plan that worked in the past and set basic simple goals. The main goal should be to simply execute the game plan. The goals for each match should be based on the history of previous matches,
