Between Point Psychology By Dr. Allen Berger and Jim Klein

Between Point Psychology: Tennis is More Than Hitting the Ball

By Allen Berger, Ph.D. and Jim Klein

What happens when you show up to take a tennis lesson? Typically the pro will ask you what you want to work on. Being eager to improve your game you tell the coach that your backhand was off in your last league match. “Can you help me figure out what I am doing wrong with my backhand?” you plead while secretly hoping that this lesson will finally give you a backhand that will strike fear in your opponent.

Similar conversations like this occur in tennis lessons all the time.

But let’s stand back and ask ourselves, what is often missing in our approach to improving our game that may also be a contributing factor to our problems with our backhand or whatever shot or aspect of our game that we are dissatisfied with and desire to improve?

The answer is that we solely focus on improving our game by concentrating on strokes (on-task) or strategy rather than being more comprehensive and asking what can we do to improve our performance when we are “off-task” as well.

When we learn to use off-task time to enhance on-task performance we are now playing optimal tennis.

Let’s define “on-task” and “off-task” time. When you are on-task in a tennis match you are actively involved in playing the point, you are starting your ritual to serve or receive or you are executing a shot or positioning yourself to react to your opponents shot. When the point is over you are now off-task. A match flows from ontask to off-task to on-task to off-task over and over again until the match is completed.

The space or time between playing points is referred to as between points and this time is regulated by the rules of the game. We have 25 seconds between points to resume play and 90 seconds on changeovers. The time between points and during change over is considered off-task time.

It may seem counter intuitive but we spend more time off-task during a tennis match than on-task.

I was fortunate enough to watch the Rafael Nadal vs. Adrian Mannarino match in the fourth round of the 2022 Australian Open. We were enthralled with the level of play both players exhibited throughout the first set which ended in an amazing tie breaker, which became an instant classic.

The tie breaker lasted 28 minutes and 40 seconds. They played a total of 30 points during the tiebreak and because it was a tiebreaker there was no change over, just a side change.

Dr. Berger decided to record the amount of time that the players were on-task during the tiebreaker. He started the stop watch the moment a player stepped up to the service line and began his service ritual (on-task), and stopped the timer when the point ended (off-task). Guess how much time these two great players were on-task?

Here’s the answer: They were ontask for 12 minutes and 58 seconds out of 28 minutes and 40 seconds. So they were on-task 44% of the time. This means they were off-task for 15 minutes and 42 seconds or 56% of the time. Here’s another interesting statistic, the average amount of time there were on-task during the tiebreak was 25 seconds whereas they were off-task for an average of 32 seconds.

Off-task time was greater than ontask time. This is typical of any match, we spend more time off-task during a match than on-task.

Given the amount of time spent offtask the question becomes how can we best use this time to enhance our performance? It’s important to note that if we don’t use this time to enhance our performance we will do things that will diminish our performance. In other words we will likely sabotage ourselves.

The process that will help enhance performance is between point psychology.

Between Point Psychology is a psychological law that where we focus is where our energy goes. For instance, if I begin my serve by telling myself “DON’T DOUBLE FAULT!!!!!”, then I am much more likely to double fault. You see the brain doesn’t process negative commands. It only registers “double fault.” When this happens we are focusing on cues (don’t double fault) that are task (serve) irrelevant. We do it all the time. We call this choking. Choking is caused by focusing on cues that are task irrelevant.

So, if our focus determines where our energy goes we want to direct our attention to cues that are performance enhancing. Several coaches have suggested ways to use off-task time to enhance performance. There are a number of different approaches. To learn more about my preferred approach, the Three R’s approach, visit LITennisMag.com.

Dr. Allen Berger received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of California, Davis. He received his USPTA Elite Pro Certification in 2005 and was the architect of the very popular Elite Tennis Summer Camp for Juniors at UC Santa Barbara. This summer, he and Jim Klein will be running their Elite Tennis Camp. Klein, co-owner of Doylestown Tennis Club is a Vic Braden trained teaching pro for the past 37 years. You can reach them at abphd@msn.com and jklein1227@protonmail.com.