Don’t Carry the Last Point Into the Next One

Doubles tennis is my favorite sport to play and watch. At the professional level, it’s a very fast-moving game that requires strategy, partnership, strong volley skills, and, much to my surprise, a lot of focus on creating a positive emotional climate.

Leander Paes was one of the world’s greatest doubles players, winning ten Grand Slam doubles titles. A few years ago, I watched him lose a tough third-round doubles match at the US Open. Along with watching Paes’s quick feet, sharp angles, and crisp volleys, I found myself paying attention to what was happening on the court between him and his partner.

Carine06 from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The pattern was fascinating. After each point, the pair would high-five and have a brief ten- to fifteen-second conversation before returning to their respective places on the court. This happened after every point—win or lose—with constant communication and acknowledgment of effort. There wasn’t usually a louder hand slap after a huge win or fussing over a badly played point. I never saw negative emotions between the two. Occasionally, one of them would yell “Come on!” to himself or slap his leg after a mistake, but what amazed me was that even after playing for more than two hours in ninety-degree heat and losing 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, their pattern between points never wavered.

I became curious. When I started watching more professional doubles matches during a recent US Open, I noticed that most teams practiced some version of this same pattern. It seemed to be an industry best practice—a satisfaction habit. Slapping hands after each point, whether they won or lost, was a deliberate, physical way of acknowledging satisfaction.

Granted, tennis is a sport. But taking the time to acknowledge satisfaction is not particularly common in sports, or in life overall, unless one tends to win. The physical act of the hand slap seemed to keep the team in a positive, or at least neutral, mood, allowing them to figure out what to do next. In any competition or challenging business situation, it is critical to stay in a mildly positive or neutral state. Otherwise, the risk of becoming too angry or too elated can cloud our ability to observe, analyze, and make good decisions.

This approach comes from Jim Loehr, a performance psychologist and bestselling author who studied tennis players and found that those who managed the sixteen-second break between points effectively were better able to tolerate different types of stress and recover more quickly to achieve full performance. The players who took the time to reflect, speak to themselves or their partner about what went wrong, visualize a positive outcome, and then take some small action—such as high-fiving their partner or moving their racquet from one hand to the other—were more relaxed and played better. (Jim Loehr, Stress for Success, New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997, pages 166-168.)

So, how can we apply this habit to everyday life?

For perfectionists, or anyone who regularly struggles with feeling less-than, learning to feel satisfied is an important first step. Celebrating satisfaction creates a more positive emotional state, which research shows can calm the nervous system and support patterns of thought that are more flexible, unusual, and ultimately more likely to lead to creative action. (Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman, Transforming Anxiety, page 56.)

I had an opportunity to test this idea myself about ten years ago, when a tennis partner asked me to play in a small local women’s doubles tournament. My first reaction was “no.” As a perfectionist, I didn’t feel ready to compete. I was afraid I would make a fool of myself. My partner convinced me that she was fine with any outcome and simply wanted to play for fun.

Although I was nervous, I entered my first doubles tournament in more than twenty years. I thought it would be a good opportunity to stretch myself and hopefully improve my tennis. I also asked my partner if we could practice the high-five technique after every point, win or lose.

It turned out to be surprisingly helpful. When I wasn’t playing well, the high-five helped me stay positive or neutral rather than moving toward that familiar place of self-doubt: What was I thinking? I stayed somewhat relaxed as my partner and I acknowledged each point and prepared for the next one. That helped me play better, and I found myself seeing more creative doubles strategies rather than simply focusing on hitting the ball over the net.

Much to my surprise, we won.

But what stayed with me wasn't just that we won. It was the realization that acknowledging each point helped me recover more quickly from mistakes, stay connected to my partner, and remain open to what might happen next.

That is something we can all practice, whether we're on a tennis court, in a difficult meeting, navigating a challenging relationship, or simply moving through an imperfect day.

We don't have to pretend that something went well when it didn't. We don't have to celebrate a mistake. We can acknowledge what happened, learn from it, recognize what is still going well, and then give ourselves permission to move on to the next point.

Sometimes, bouncing back faster isn't about changing the outcome. It's about learning how to recalibrate our emotional state so that we're ready for whatever comes next.