Confidence? Who Needs That?

I played a great doubles match this morning. One of the total luxuries of not working means I get to play tennis during the day. It's the ultimate guilty pleasure - I get my exercise on while the sun is still up with a bunch of fun folks. And to make things even better? I remembered how to serve a ball in the damn service box. It will be a long time before I take that for granted again.

Lemme explain.

The movements associated with the sport are motions my body is completely at home with -  quick side to side movements, explosive forward and back sprints, service motion, forehands - they are all very much a rhythm in my life.

Generally speaking, there are things that go wrong with every tennis game from time to time, even with the best players. If you don't play for a while, your timing is off. Sometimes your grip gets slightly too far one way or another, and things go badly for a while. Sometimes you forget how much topspin you need. And sometimes? Your confidence takes a nosedive and manifests it in a very frustrating way.

It has been several years since I've had an issue with confidence, but apparently there was a worm of doubt that managed to infiltrate my game and manifested itself with a completely defunct serve. I know it started several weeks ago, and I know it went into full bloom during the first match I played with one of the junior players. I haven't double faulted so much since I was a teenager. Nor have I wanted to throw my racket quite as much since I was a teenager. I (mostly) refrained.

So when it first went out, my first thought was to look at my mechanics. I broke everything down, thought about the process of serving, tried out various things - sometimes something would work, but usually only for a game or two. The more I thought about it, the more irritated and frustrated I got. It wasn't the toss. It wasn't the swing. It wasn't my grip. It wasn't my spin.

In the beginning, it might have been mechanics. But by the time I finished screwing around with everything, it was 100% confidence. I was afraid to go after the ball, I was scared of the serve, and I was incredibly frustrated. And the only thing to do with something like that is to work through it and bring it back around. I knew it was confidence because I would serve just fine in warmups, and completely break down in the match. I've played this stupid game since I was 12 years old. This shit should not happen.

Last week during a doubles match, I finally gave up. My only goal was to serve the ball in the right square with just enough pace to get the ball over the net. Funny enough, that might have done the trick. I started getting a few more serves in, even though they looked terrible and my opponents ate them up for lunch. My doubles partner wasn't thrilled with that, but at least they were going in, as opposed to just donating points.

Towards the end of that match, I found the rhythm to the serve that had been missing. I could feel what I had been doing wrong, and it was all about not having enough confidence to hit out on the ball. It wasn't mechanics. Just a stupid lack of confidence.

Today, after a week off, I finally felt normal again. I was popping serves with my normal rhythm, making shots, and I felt 100% at home again on the court. Funny how much you miss that feeling when it disappears. It was a good reminder that no matter how long you've been playing, you are never immune to a drop in confidence or a complete collapse of a shot. I enjoyed every. damn. serve. I hit today. It's a lot more fun when they actually go in.