Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

3 Mindset Lessons from My New Masterclass

• Will Boucek • Episode 177

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0:00 | 21:24

Three lessons that will improve your mental game on the doubles court. There's obviously a huge difference between pro and club-level doubles players. While we can't emulate their 120 MPH serves, we can absorb their mindset.

These three lessons from my new Masterclass have helped me more than any others over the last several years and I know they'll help you too.

  1. You don't have to win every point. Duh?!
  2. Be willing to make changes. Most club players never do.
  3. You're the 4th most important player on the doubles court.

If you can grasp these lessons and keep improving them, you'll transform the way you view the doubles court and start thinking like the pros!

>> The Mental Game Masterclass

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Improving Doubles Mindset

Speaker 1

Today I'm relaunching my masterclass on the mental game and it's going to help you improve your mindset for doubles and I want to share with you in this episode three lessons from the masterclass to give you kind of a free preview and help you out with your mindset in doubles. And really I want to share with you these three lessons that I have personally transformed my own mindset on over the last five to seven years and it's helped my doubles game a lot. So these are basically the three most important lessons from the masterclass. Again, it's live now, 30% off through Sunday, so I'm going to link to it in the show notes for those of you who enjoy this episode and enjoy this content and want to learn more and potentially enroll in that. If not, that's okay, you're still going to get a lot out of this free episode as well. So let's dive into these three lessons three mindset lessons for doubles today. And again, these are three things that I've kind of changed my own mentality on over the years and it's helped my doubles game a lot. And it's things that I'm still trying to help other people understand because, as I continue to play doubles and continue to coach doubles players, I'm trying to deliver this information in a more articulate, more digestible way for all of you, a certain way that just doesn't land, and then, if I can rephrase it and choose the right language, it'll land better and you'll be able to absorb it more and execute it more on the court. So a lot of these lessons are very vague. Obviously, with mindset, a lot of them are difficult to grasp entirely at first. But if you keep telling yourself these things over the years, you're going to keep improving your mindset and really, if you'd gone back to me five to seven years ago and tried to explain these things in the way I understand them now, I wouldn't have been able to grasp all of it Really. You have to go out and implement and experiment on the court and really experience all of this stuff to really understand it. So that's kind of a long-winded way of saying that this is a complex topic and I'm going to do my best to help you understand it in the best way possible.

Speaker 1

So lesson number one is you don't have to win every point. This sounds obvious. It might sound a little bit dumb, but it's something that most players do not live by when they're on the doubles court. They do not have this mindset. Instead, one of the phrases I hear all the time on the doubles court is my bad. I hear all the time on the doubles court is my bad.

Speaker 1

So when I'm coaching a team, sometimes I'll sit back behind the baseline and I'm watching the players play. So I'm watching all four players play a point and I'll be coaching the team on my side of the net and then on the changeover I'll be coaching the other team and a lot of times they'll play out a really good doubles point and then they'll lose and they'll come back to the baseline and the partner who missed the last shot or the partner who got beat down the alley will tell their other partner my bad, I'll get that next time. And I'll have to stop them and say wait, wait, wait, wait. What did you do wrong? Because if you're going to say it's your bad, if you're going to take blame for that, I want you to be very specific about what you should have done differently. And they don't have an answer because they didn't do anything wrong. So a lot of times in doubles you'll do nothing wrong and you'll still lose the point.

Speaker 1

So a good example of this maybe the most simple example I can think of is if you go back to the baseline with your partner you're serving, you call a serve into the body and a poach. So your partner goes back there, you're at the net, they hit the serve, they land a really good first serve into the body. You poach in the right direction, the opponent hits a down the line winner. That's a really, really good return. So you walk back and what I'll hear a lot of times is oh, I left too early, or maybe the server will say just start covering the line. Maybe you don't communicate before each serve point, maybe you just decided to poach anyways. Your partner might say you need to cover the line on that. So these are things that are going to make you worse as a team. And then also, you didn't do anything wrong on that point.

Speaker 1

You have to think about the percentages, and the fact that they hit a down the line return winner off of a good first serve means that they just made one of their two or three out of 10 shots, because seven out of 10 times they're going to miss that shot when they go for it. That was just one of the two or three. So if you're going to hit a down the line return winner off of a good first serve. If you watch club level doubles players in this situation, all of those things can happen. Maybe the player at the net kind of rolls their eyes and throws their head back and they'll tell their partner that they left too early. Or the server will tell their partner you need to cover the line on that. Or they'll walk back and say, my bad, I should have stayed, or my bad, I should have hit a better first serve, but they didn't do anything wrong. When you watch pro players and this exact same thing happens the server lands a good first serve, the net player moves, the returner hits a really good down the line return winner.

Strategic Tennis Techniques and Mindset

Speaker 1

The team that just lost the point will actually kind of have good energy. They'll have positive body language. They'll do a fist pump because they know that they just executed a really good play that's going to work 60 to 70% of the time and if they keep executing that play they're going to win the majority of those points. So you don't have to win every point. Something else to think about is I like to use poker and I use it in the master class as an example, but in poker a lot of times people will bluff and they'll give up you know, ten dollars now to win twenty dollars later. And you can do that in doubles as well. You might lose some points early on in the match or early on in the set that help you win points later. Maybe by poaching and missing a volley. You are showing the opponents that you're willing to move and they're going to feel more pressure and you're going to generate more return errors even though you lost that point. So again, there's so many different angles to look at this from. So again, there's so many different angles to look at this from. But the phrase you don't have to win every point is something that I'm still kind of learning what all that means, but it's something that's really, really important as far as your mindset goes in doubles and something I dive really deep into in all of the different lessons in the masterclass. So let's move on to lesson number two.

Speaker 1

Lesson number two is to have a willingness to experiment and change things, especially when they're not working. So what I see from so many club level players whether I'm going to a USTA tournament or watching some of my teammates on a league team, whatever it is they'll play the exact same way the whole match and they'll lose a match 6-4, 7-6. And they'll just think they needed to play better. But really they didn't make any strategic or tactical adjustments throughout the match. What most players do is, if you're down an early break, you kind of write it off to oh, they got lucky in that game or oh, I just didn't hit my serves good in that first set. Whatever it is, that won't continue, but they don't think about.

Speaker 1

You know, should you be making changes to your formations? Should you switch return sides after the first set? Should you change up how you're hitting from the baseline? Maybe you should start hitting with more pace or less pace. Maybe you should stop serving and volleying. Maybe you should stop serving and volleying. Maybe you should start serving and volleying. Making some kind of tactical adjustment is super important to be able to improve your chances of winning. And if you're losing a match 6-4-7-6, there's certainly tactical adjustments that you probably could have made during the match. And if you have a willingness to make these changes, the more willing you are to make these adjustments, the better you're going to be over the long term. So those are just a few of the things that I would think about changing during a match.

Speaker 1

And a lot of times what you'll do is you might switch return sides after the first set, thinking we're just not returning. Well, I don't know what's going to come of this, I don't know if this will work, but we need to change something. And then all of a sudden you get into the second set and it's working and you find things that are beneficial to switching return sides that you wouldn't have even thought of before. Or maybe it's using I formation more on the ad side. You'll find different benefits that you couldn't have thought of before. So this willingness to change and experiment on the court, especially with things like serve formations, playing two back on returns, using variety with your shot selection, those things you can all experiment from one point to the next.

Speaker 1

Obviously, switching return sides you can't switch during a set but you can switch in between sets. So you've got to have a willingness to try different stuff out and most players, I feel like, just try harder. They miss a volley at the net and then they do a few shadow swings or they double fault and then they try to experiment with their ball toss at the baseline. Or they miss a forehand and they do a few shadow swings, thinking that it's their technique, and it may be, but that's something very difficult to change during one particular match. Technique takes days, weeks, months to really make adjustments on.

Speaker 1

So focusing on strategy during the match and having this willingness to experiment, willingness to change, is huge. So be quick to make these changes and you're going to find benefits that, again, you didn't see before or you couldn't have seen before, especially if something's not working, because doubles has very, very small margins. So a 6-4, 7-6 match, while that looks close on the scoreboard, if you played that team 10 times over, they might win eight out of 10 of those if you play that same way, and they might all be close, but they're probably a better team. So you're not going to be able to make technical adjustments to get over the hump for a six, four, seven, six match. So hopefully that makes sense. Different conversations you can have with your partner on changeovers before matches, after matches, as well as questions that you can ask, very specific questions that you can ask to come up with solutions to problems that you're facing on the court. So if you want more, check it out in the show notes.

Speaker 1

So let's move on to the third lesson. The third lesson, and I have a whole video on this in the masterclass. It's something that, again, I'm still trying to improve upon and trying to grasp fully. I feel like it applies to so many different aspects of the doubles court, but I learned this lesson from Craig O'Shaughnessy, so he is somebody I've mentioned on the podcast a number of times. He used to work with Novak Djokovic. He's a strategy analyst for the ATP and he mostly focuses on singles, and one of the phrases he uses is you're the second most important player on the court. So if we shift that over to doubles, you're the fourth most important player on the court.

Speaker 1

So your priority on the doubles court has to be your opponents, your attention, your eyes. You need to be staring at the opponents during the point as much as you can, studying their movement, their shot selection, their position, their comfort level with certain areas of the court and with different shots and with different types of balls that you and your partner hit or different types of serves. So studying your opponents is priority number one, not focusing on yourself. Priority number two is working with your partner. So making sure your partner is in a comfortable area of the court, making sure that they're playing to their strengths and then you're the fourth most important player.

Speaker 1

One of the other ways to kind of you can kind of look at this is you already know what you can do going into the match, right? You probably know, or you should know, your strengths and weaknesses and where you like to hit forehands from, or whether you like to be at the net or the baseline or the types of serves you like to hit. You already know all that stuff. So, focusing on yourself, you're not going to learn anything new, but focusing on your opponents, you're going to learn a lot of new information if you can train yourself to constantly be studying them throughout the match and you'll learn a lot of information about them. And then you'll be able to create a game plan that makes them less comfortable and forces more errors. And then you'll also be studying your partner and you'll be learning more information about them.

Speaker 1

And the advantage we have with our partner over our opponents is we can actually talk to them so we can ask them questions, and in the master class I go over tons of different questions and conversations that you should be having with your partner to figure out how to get your partner and yourself as a team into the best positions possible on the court and play to your strengths, and you're going to be able to learn a lot from your partner and a lot about your partner, and you'll be able to adjust your strategy accordingly. But if you're focused on yourself, like most of us are, then you're not going to really learn a whole lot of new information and you're not going to be able to improve your strategy throughout the match. So what a lot of people do is they're constantly focused on their own technique or getting their ball toss high, like I talked about earlier, and these things are important. But during the point between the points, I want you thinking about your opponents, thinking about your partner, more so because thinking about ourselves is human nature, it's the natural tendency for us, so that is going to kind of take care of itself as well. So again, just focusing and remembering that you're the fourth most important player on the court is something that's totally changed the way I play doubles over the last seven years or so, and it's something that has improved over time. It's not something that I changed from one match to the next. I'm still trying to get better and better at this. So you've got to start training it now, and you'll be amazed where you can get in the next one. Two it now and you'll be amazed where you can get in the next one, two, three, five years, if you kind of take all of this into account. So again, to recap, you don't have to win every point. You should really have a willingness to quickly experiment on the court and change things, especially with your tactics and your strategy, and then you're the fourth most important player on the court. Prioritize studying your opponents, then making sure your partner's comfortable, and then worry about yourself. I go over all this in the master class. Again, it's 30% off through Sunday. It's over two and a half hours of video content.

Masterclass Enrollment Discount and Q&A

Speaker 1

I cover topics like how to have a good attitude, stay positive on the court, what to do when you get angry and why that's actually bad, which is something I don't think really anybody teaches. Everybody says stay positive, but nobody ever explains why. I talk about pressure situations, how to handle tiebreakers and how to handle pressure points if you get nervous, how to really dance with the nerves and learn how to play despite getting nervous. I talk about how to avoid mid-match slumps, how to stay focused and sustain energy throughout the match, how to start hot. A lot of players start out really slow in doubles matches. If that's you, then I've got some tips for you in the masterclass and a few different lessons on that.

Speaker 1

Communication with your doubles partner is super important. I talk about that not only during the match, but also before the match different things you can go over, as well as on changeovers between sets, between points, and then post-match as well, which is something that a lot of us neglect and that is going to help you improve over time as well, and then overall, it just is going to help you get into the mindset that you need to play better doubles and to outsmart your opponents. So this mindset has helped me become a better doubles player. I've learned, obviously, from some of the best doubles players in the world, from studying them, from talking to them, and from some of the best coaches in the world, and it's allowed me to win doubles matches against players that would blow me off the court in singles, because I'm able to strategically outsmart them, and that's what I love so much about doubles and that's why I do this.

Speaker 1

So I've put a lot of effort into this masterclass, as you can tell, so I hope you'll get a chance to enroll and check it out Again. 30% off through this Sunday. If you have any questions about it, if you're not sure if it's for you, or if you have a question about a specific topic, you can always reach out to me and I will share my honest, best advice with you. Will at the tennis tribecom is the best way to contact me, and thank you all for listening and I will talk to you all next week.