Who are the tennis serial winning

In the last days, we’ve witnessed some great tennis matches at the Internazionali d’Italia and the outstanding performances of Jasmine Paolini, Sara Errani, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Let’s try to identify the key traits that set these serial winners apart from other equally talented but less successful players.

The difference between serial winners in tennis and talented players who win less frequently lies primarily in mindset. While technical and physical skills are fundamental, it’s the psychological aspect that often makes the real difference in crucial moments.

Characteristics of the Serial Winner’s Mindset

  • Handling pressure and emotions – Champions like Novak Djokovic have emphasized the importance of mental stability. Djokovic has stated that his turning point came when he learned to manage his emotions better and quickly bounce back after difficult moments.
  • Focus on the process – Tennis players must concentrate on giving their best effort in every point, rather than obsessing over the final outcome. This process-focused approach helps maintain concentration and reduces performance anxiety.
  • Positive self-talk – The ability to maintain constructive internal dialogue is essential. “Self-talk” techniques help athletes stay focused and confident during matches.
  • Growth-oriented mindset – Champions see every challenge as an opportunity to improve. They develop a mentality that pushes them to exceed their limits through commitment and perseverance.

A study showed that the difference between top players and those ranked around 150 is often minimal: top players win about 51% of points, while the lower-ranked win around 45%. This indicates that small margins can lead to significant differences in results, and mindset can be the decisive factor.

Therefore, while natural talent is important, it’s a winning mindset that allows champions to consistently excel. Through emotional management, process focus, positive self-talk, and a growth-driven mentality, serial winners manage to stand out even in the most critical moments.

Review: Palla al centro, psicologia del calcio

In youth sports the dominant approach is still heavily instructional

In youth sports, both in team and individual disciplines, the dominant approach is still heavily instructional: the coach speaks, and the young athletes execute.
You still see a lot of mechanical repetitions, isolated drills, and very few situations in which the athlete is required to think, choose, and adapt.

But why does this happen, despite modern research and sports pedagogy pointing in the opposite direction?

Traditional Coaching Culture

Many coaches have grown up in a system based on top-down knowledge transmission. This model:

  • prioritizes technical repetition;

  • is perceived as “orderly” and controllable;

  • ignores the cognitive complexity of the game.

Pressure for Short-Term Results

Coaches, managers, and parents often aim for immediate outcomes: winning games, seeing “organized play,” avoiding mistakes. This leads to:

  • simplifying instruction into rigid, standardized patterns;

  • reducing the athlete’s autonomy;

  • excluding or penalizing those who don’t lead to immediate victories;

  • stifling creativity.

The focus on results replaces the care for long-term developmental processes.

Lack of Coach Education

Many youth coaches:

  • lack in-depth training in active methodologies;

  • are unfamiliar with tools like the ecological model, the constraints-led approach, or Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU);

  • rely on “successful” adult-level models, which don’t work the same way with young people.

Difficulty Handling Complex Learning

A path that develops game understanding requires:

  • time and patience;

  • accepting mistakes as part of the process;

  • the ability to ask thought-provoking questions, not just give instructions.

Many coaches fear losing control if they open the game to players’ initiative, because active learning can appear chaotic from the outside.

Stereotypes and Misguided Models

In sports media, authoritarian coaches, rigid systems, and “chalkboard” solutions are often glorified. This reinforces the idea that youth sports should follow the same approach, even though children and adolescents don’t need to execute patterns—they need to understand and decide.

Ancelotti and Brazil: a dream

Amazing Ancelotti

Adulthood and self-regulation

I often hear people say that young people lack tenacity, resilience, and essentially, character.

But then I look around and see people who are severely overweight, adults who can’t take their eyes off their phones even when crossing the street, people who start honking for the slightest reason — and I could go on with other examples that reveal a world full of impatient individuals, always looking for something to complain about, and who generally show little self-control and little ability to regulate their behavior in public settings.

And so it occurs to me that maybe the problem isn’t with young people, but rather with adults — who lack the ability to respect themselves and others, and to serve as moral and educational role models.

These are topics that often come up in the media, but just standing on the street in an affluent neighborhood of Rome and observing these behaviors should make us reflect on how obvious the shortcomings of the adult world are, even in the most ordinary, everyday situations.

To observe

Challenges faced by psychologists entering the world of competitive sports

Many psychologists who approach the world of sports encounter significant operational challenges, often linked to their training predominantly focused on cognitive learning principles. While this approach is valid in clinical or educational settings, it proves partial and sometimes inadequate when applied to the sports context, where motor learning plays a fundamental role.

Motor learning, in fact, is not limited to the intellectual understanding of a movement but involves neuromuscular, perceptual, emotional, and motivational processes. It requires direct experience, repetition, adaptation to the environment, and a constant integration between mind and body. Ignoring these aspects means failing to grasp the complexity of athletic actions and, consequently, proposing psychological interventions that are ineffective or disconnected from daily sports practice.

Another limitation lies in the lack of familiarity with the concept of competitiveness, a central and distinctive element of competitive sports. Unlike many professional and organizational contexts—where cooperation and relational balance are prevalent values—in sports, the goal of victory, pressure management, direct confrontation with opponents, and error tolerance constitute daily challenges. These dynamics require specific psychological skills that cannot be reduced to standardized protocols.

In this context, there is a risk of overestimating the effectiveness of general psychological techniques — such as mindfulness, breathing, or visualization — sometimes considered universal solutions. Although useful, these techniques must be integrated into a structured pathway, built upon a solid understanding of the athlete’s psychophysical functioning and the principles of motor and sports training, and always adapted to individual characteristics, age, and competition level.

In conclusion, working in competitive sports requires specific training that goes beyond traditional psychological competencies, including a deep understanding of motor processes, performance logic, and the typical pressures of the competitive context.

Psychologist’s goals in tennis

A non-exhaustive summary of what a psychologist working in tennis should be able to do: understand the player’s emotional states during matches and the origin of mistakes; work to restore certain essential mental functions.

Bridging the mental gap between training and competition

In the context of track and field, athletes’ tenacity and resilience are frequently put to the test during training. Workouts based on preset times, exhausting intervals, and simulated race paces represent daily challenges that force athletes to draw deeply on their mental resources to maintain the required performance. In this way, key psychological qualities such as fatigue management, stress tolerance, and the determination not to give up become an integral part of the training process, systematically and directly developed through regular practice.

In contrast, in individual sports with a stronger tactical component (such as tennis, judo, fencing, etc.), training tenacity and resilience outside of competition is much more complex. During practice, emotional stress, uncertainty, and decision-making pressure are often only partially simulated and rarely reproduce the true tension of actual competition. As a result, athletes may arrive at competitions unprepared to handle critical moments such as a drop in performance, a crucial mistake, or intense pressure from an opponent. This “gap” between training and competition exposes athletes to the risk of mental breakdowns at decisive moments.

To bridge this gap, it is essential to integrate training situations that stimulate the emotional and psychological components of performance, by creating artificially stressful contexts or introducing unexpected variables that force the athlete to react, adapt, and maintain tactical clarity under pressure.

1. Simulate pressure and uncertainty

Training should include exercises where the athlete must manage:

  • Simulated unfavorable scorelines (e.g., starting down a set or several points behind).

  • Time- or constraint-based objectives (e.g., “win three consecutive points within two minutes” or “resolve an action within a few seconds”).

  • Quick decision-making with changing options, similar to match conditions.

2. Introduce unexpected situations and variability

Training should not always be predictable:

  • Change conditions suddenly (e.g., narrower playing area, different opponent, altered rules).

  • Introduce controlled “distractions” (noise, interruptions, small errors to manage).

3. Train mental fatigue as well as physical fatigue

In competition, mental stress weighs as much as physical stress:

  • Plan drills under fatigue conditions (e.g., work on tactics or technique immediately after intense efforts).

  • Force athletes to make decisions under cognitive, not just physical, fatigue.

4. Work on self-efficacy and coping strategies

Integrate specific, even brief, sessions where:

  • Stress management techniques are taught (breathing exercises, positive self-talk, mental reset routines).

  • Confidence is built through training-based “problem solving” (“What do you do if you lose confidence? How do you react under pressure?”).

5. Measure mental aspects

Do not evaluate only technical or physical results, but also:

  • The ability to react to mistakes.

  • The readiness to change strategy.

  • The quality of decision-making under pressure.

Dybala, Calcio Insieme and Laureus

Roma striker and World Cup winner with Argentina, Paulo Dybala, was today named a Laureus Ambassador. The 31-year-old Argentine footballer kicked off his new role with a visit to the Laureus Sport for Good program in Rome and took part in the 25th edition of the Laureus World Sports Awards in Madrid on Monday.

Dybala has won five Serie A titles with Juventus and the World Cup with Argentina in 2022. The Argentine star, who now plays for Roma, visited our project ‘Calcio Insieme’, supported by AS Roma, which uses football to help children with intellectual disabilities. Over 30 children and young people met the new Laureus Ambassador.

Dybala nuovo ambasciatore Laureus: "E' un grande onore"