Tag Archive for 'Knapp'

In tennis is determinant to accept to lose

I am not a tennis statistician  but I got curious to know how many matches are won/lost in a career. I did this research onlychoosing few women tennis players, even though I hope that someone has done extensive studies on the relation between matches won and lost. The results found are interesting for me to understand the situations that tennis players find themselves living more frequently and to understand which could be the psychological implications.

tennis players   matches   lost    won    %

Camila Giorgi   322        193    129    59

Karin Knapp    519        314    205    60

F. Schiavone    902        526    376    58

Sara Errani      617        368     249    59

R. Vinci           843         520    323    61

S. Williams      764         650     114    85

M. Sharapova  672         535     137   79

It appears that with the exception of the firsts in the world and winners at least one Grand Slam tournament, as Williams and Sharapova, who lost an average of 2 out of 10 games played. For the others, although among the best in the world, the percentage of games lost is very high, on average around 4 out of 10. Tennis, perhaps more than any other sport also for the high number of tournaments played each year, requires the ability to know how to live the losses because they are a frequent  and repetitive occurrence. Only very few athletes in the world not fall into this category since they have a very high success rate, it’s necessary for all others recover immediately from a defeat at the risk of falling into a losing streak, given the high probability of losing is always present.

On the basis of these considerations it’s evident the need for the women tennis players to improve their mental reaction to failures, otherwise they run the risk of getting into a downward spiral from which it’s taken more time to get out .

Tennis winner is the player doing one error less of the opponent

In tennis win who makes less mistakes. In Australia, Diokovic lost against Stanislas Wawrinka after more than five hours to have committed three errors more than his opponent. Karin Knapp lost for only two errors more than Sharapova. What should these matches teach players? In the court it does not matter how many mistakes you make, the important thing is to make one less than your opponent. At this point a match fought, in which they play even 100 points, one players can also win by committing even 30/40. This fact shows how important it’s for the players to accept their mistakes with the awareness that in a match won they will do may errors. Conversely, if after the first error you begin to speak against yourself and lose self-confidence, the effect will be to increase the probability of being wrong even more. To do mistakes, instead, is part of the physiology of the game. Typically, the winning player is the best to accept them.