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.

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.

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.