4 Double Faults

I’ve been a sports lover. I enjoy the challenges it brings, the dopamine it provides, and the friendship it fosters. Tennis is no exception. Having been wanting to participate in such a sophisticated sport since high school, I finally got into it early last year.

When I was a newbie, I consulted many people I met through the journey on how to become a better player. Some told me to perfect my strokes. Some advised me to improve my footsteps. Some recommended endurance training. Only 1 friend S said to me: “Most people focus on the perfection of their techniques but few train their minds. Train your mind for the game, Kerry and find what works for you technique-wise, everyone’s body is different.”. He is, indeed, a very wise friend.

I always remember that whenever I get the chance to play a game or two. Playing games is very different from just rallying with friends even for social ones. For one, one would be put under pressure which influences performance. Too much or too little pressure would lead to poor performance. You don’t want your muscles and mind to be too tight or too relaxed, hence, getting into the right state of mind is of utmost importance. For two, you now get to see how competitive your friends are, surprise!

Today, during a friendly but deadly mixed doubles match, both my doubles partner H and I felt tight on the shoulder. Our serves are not as aggressive as we would like to be and our placement is not as precise as we wanted. The number of double faults and unforced errors were over the roof. We lost 2 sets in an hour.

When a new set began, and it was H’s turn to serve, he just looked at me, smiled and said: “I am going to serve 4 double faults. 8 serves on the net.”.

For those who are not familiar with the rules of tennis, a double fault is when a player failed to serve the ball to the service box twice. The quickest way to lose a game is by serving double faults consistently. One double fault, 0-15. Two double faults, 0-30. Three double faults 0-40. Four double faults, game over. (For any questions regarding the scoring of tennis, please send all your enquiries to the French.)

Back to H, after he said those magical words, he started to serve like an animal. My jaw dropped to the court. And whenever he actually served a double fault, he would say: “well, 1 down, more to go.”. We won that game in 2 minutes with 3 ACES and we started winning. When it was my turn to serve, I adopted the same mantra: “I am going to serve 4 double faults. 8 serves out of the service box.”. My serve immediately got better. The tension on my shoulder was relieved and I let go of the fear of failure. And we started winning.

On the way home, I kept thinking: there’s something positive in accepting the worst-case scenario, and there’s something negative in being blindly optimistic. After some research, my hypothesis is confirmed. In 1986, Nancy Ellen Cantor and Julie K Norem co-published a paper, Defensive pessimism: Harnessing anxiety as motivation, in which they identified the concept of Defensive Pessimism as a cognitive strategy to prepare for anxiety-provoking events and performances. In 2008, Norem published another paper on this topic, Defensive pessimism, anxiety, and the complexity of evaluating self-regulation, in which she states:

“Individuals who use defensive pessimism set low expectations, and play through extensive mental simulations of possible outcomes as they prepare for goal-relevant tasks and situations”

Indeed, accepting that the worst-case scenario is losing the game in the quickest way possible has freed our minds from anxiety and enabled us to think about how to make the most of the tough situation we were in.

Moreover, defensive pessimism also plays a key role in physical performance. Professor Samuele Marcora has found that when individuals feel worse than expected, the perception of effort will increase and their performance will suffer. However, if they ensure that how they feel during the game is no worse than expected, thereby set themselves up to get the most out of their body. Hence, we were able to relax our muscles and push through fatigue during the game after repeating our defensively pessimistic mantra: “4 double faults”.