Believe it or not, winning is more painful than losing. When Djokovic wins the Australian Open next year he will have suffered more physically and mentally than any of the opponents he beats on the way. Losing hurts, no doubt, but most of that hurt is mental. Whoever takes you out suffers more mentally though - because we all know that handling prosperity is a much more challenging ask than getting the break back when you’re down. Likewise, injecting pace and offense is much more taxing than stabbing the ball back into play or counterpunching pace. It takes more energy to win, but sometimes we forget this and expect our manicured strokes to do all of the work.
To win matches and tournaments you must be willing to suffer more than your opponent.
A lot of tennis players are under the vastly incorrect impression that immense coaching and technique results in Ws. Not so. I don’t care how finely tuned the strokes are, if you can’t drop it all and fight through the rough mental patches, and physical ones too, you are not going to have much success in tennis. Nadal is the best example of this.
His strokes are not half of Federer’s in technique nor precision (he uses a racket that has ten square inches of additional string bed and just rips topspin - his energy output is fierce and results in great action on the ball but you could never label him a shot maker), yet he holds an impressive winning head to head record against Federer. He is much more willing to suffer.
Federer relies so heavily on his technique and confidence (based on that technique) that fighting and scrapping is not really a term he understands at the level of Nadal or Djokovic. His precision aggression wins and loses all of the points he plays. Scraping points out is not something he is accustomed to doing. Don’t think Federer is not one of the best fighters of all time. He is. No questions about it, but when comparing him to his peers, they are much more accustomed to this high effort type of tennis required today with all of the high spin strings and larger racket heads - the fight. The grinding, the scraping.
All of his opponents know this type of tennis well. They’ve learned to hustle like nobody before them. Their games have evolved to counterpunch with the primary purpose of beating Federer.
Whether you are a counterpuncher or a vintage attacker styled after Fed or Sampras, you are going to use more calories and suffer more mental agony during your wins than your loses. Now some of you may say bullshit. I say bullshit. Ripping your opponent side to side takes a lot of effort per stroke. Likewise, if you defend well enough to put yourself in a position to rip a winner in a given point then you are definitely out hustling your attacker.
I hope this post lights a fire under your ass to run a little harder on D, and swing a bit harder on the attack. We can all improve here. And win a bit more. I know, just thinking about it hurts. Suck it up.
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