The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

by W. Timothy Gallwey

So it is with the greatest efforts in sports; they come when the mind is as still as a glass lake.

In short, “getting it together” requires slowing the mind. Quieting the mind means less thinking, calculating, judging, worrying, fearing, hoping, trying, regretting, controlling, jittering, or distracting. The mind is still when it is totally here and now in perfect oneness with the action and the actor.

The first skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.

It is interesting to see how the judgmental mind extends itself. It may begin by complaining, “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today.” After a few more “bad” serves, the judgment may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve.” Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,”

these self-judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.

Relaxation produces smooth strokes and results from accepting your strokes as they are, even if erratic.

The first step is to see your strokes as they are. They must be perceived clearly. This can be done only when personal judgment is absent. As soon as a stroke is seen clearly and accepted as it is, a natural and speedy process of change begins.

When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are.

Clearly, positive and negative evaluations are relative to each other. It is impossible to judge one event as positive without seeing other events as not positive or as negative. There is no way to stop just the negative side of the judgmental process. To see your strokes as they are, there is no need to attribute goodness or badness to them.

inner skill to be developed in the Inner Game is that of nonjudgmental awareness.

It is important to remember that not all remarks are judgmental. Acknowledgment of one’s own or another’s strengths, efforts, accomplishments, etc., can facilitate natural learning, whereas judgments interfere. What is the difference? Acknowledgment of and respect for one’s capabilities support trust in Self 2. Self 1’s judgments, on the other hand, attempt to manipulate and undermine that trust.

It is Self 1’s mistrust of Self 2 which causes both the interference called “trying too hard” and that of too much self-instruction.

Trusting your body in tennis means letting your body hit the ball. The key word is let. You trust in the competence of your body and its brain, and you let it swing the racket. Self 1 stays out of it. But though this is very simple, it does not mean that it is easy.

Trust the body to learn and to play, as you would trust another person to do a job, and in a short time it will perform beyond your expectations. Let the flower grow.

If so, this change can start with a change of attitude. If you observe Self 1, in its critical posture, it looks down at Self 2 and diminishes it (in its own eyes) with its disparaging thoughts. The other possibility is to learn to look up to Self 2. This is the attitude of respect based on true recognition of its natural intelligence and capabilities.

If Player A wishes to make sure of getting their message across to Player B, Player A will, if they can, use Player B’s native tongue. What is the native language of Self 2? Certainly not words! Words were not learned by Self 2 until several years after birth. No, the native tongue of Self 2 is imagery: sensory images. Movements are learned through visual and

clear visual image of the results she desired.

Getting the clearest possible image of your desired outcomes is a most useful method for communicating with Self 2, especially when playing a match.

The first involves trying to hit a stationary target with a tennis ball. Place a tennis-ball can in the backhand corner of one of the service courts. Then figure out how you should swing your racket in order to hit the can. Think about how high to toss the ball, about the proper angle of your racket at impact, the proper weight flow, and so forth.

“Imagine that I am the director of a television series. Knowing that you are an actor that plays tennis, I ask if you would like to do a bit part as a top-flight tennis player. I assure you that you needn’t worry about hitting the ball out or into the net because the camera will only be focused on you and will not follow the ball. What I’m mainly interested in is that you adopt professional mannerisms, and that you swing your racket with supreme self-assurance. Above all, your face must express no self-doubt. You should look as if you are hitting every ball exactly where you want to. Really get into the role, hit as hard as you like, and ignore where the ball is actually going.”

have found that when players break their habitual patterns, they can greatly extend the limits of their own style and explore subdued aspects of their personality. As you gain easier access to the variety of qualities encompassed in your Self 2, you begin to realize that you can call upon any of these qualities as appropriate to the given situation on or off the tennis court.

if we let ourselves lose touch with our ability to feel our actions, by relying too heavily on instructions, we can seriously compromise our access to our natural learning processes and our potential to perform. Instead, if we hit the ball relying on the instincts of Self 2, we reinforce the simplest neural pathway to the optimal shot.

you cannot use it successfully by merely “obeying” it. Instead you use the instruction to guide your discovery of the optimal degree of tightness of your wrist. This of course can be done by paying attention to the feel of your wrist during your stroke and does not necessarily have to be put into language.

Both positive and negative thinking inhibit spontaneity.

The more you let yourself perform free of control on the tennis court, the more confidence you tend to gain in the beautiful mechanism that is the human body. The more you trust it, the more capable it seems to become.

There are two things that tennis players must know on every shot: where the ball is and where their is. If players lose contact with either of these he is in trouble. Most players have learned to put visual attention on the ball, but many have only the vaguest notion about where their racket head is most of the time.

The greatest attention should be placed on the feel of your arm and hand at the moment just before they swing forward to meet the ball.

How hard are you squeezing your grip?

Every player has a unique natural rhythm. If you learn to concentrate on the sense of rhythm, it is not difficult to fall into the rhythm most natural and effective for you. Rhythm can never be achieved by being overly purposeful about it; you have to let it happen.

In short, become aware of your body. Know what it feels like to move your body into position, as well as how it feels to swing your racket. Remember: It is almost impossible to feel or see anything well if you are thinking about how you should be moving. Forget shoulds and experience is.

Though focus of attention helps your tennis, it is equally true that playing tennis can help your focus of attention.

But it is also necessary to learn to focus awareness in the now. This simply means tuning in to what is happening in the present. The greatest lapses in concentration come when we allow our minds to project what is about to happen or to dwell on what has already happened.

How to stay concentrated in the here and now between points? My own device, and one that has been effective for many of my students, is to focus attention on breathing. Some object or activity which is always present is needed. What is more here and now than one’s breathing? Putting attention on breathing simply means observing my breath going in, going out, going in, going out in its natural rhythm. It does not mean intentionally controlling my breath.

This technique is not only useful for me in stopping the mind from fretting about bad shots, but keeps me from being self-conscious about unusually good shots.

Because Self 1 is not in the picture, sometimes we say, “I didn’t do it, it just happened.” Commonly students use language like, “I wasn’t there,” “Something else took over,” “My racket did this, or did that,” as if it had a will of its own. But the racket wasn’t missing, and the great shot was not an accident, even though you didn’t plan it. It was Self 2 hitting the ball. It was in fact you hitting the ball without the normal interference from Self 1.

Our minds leave the reality of the present only when we prefer the unreality of the past or future.

How can the quality of one’s tennis assume such importance that it causes anxiety, anger, depression, and self-doubt? The answer seems to be deeply rooted in a basic pattern of our culture. We live in an achievement-oriented society where people tend to be measured by their competence in various endeavors.

If someone plays bad golf, it comes somehow to mean that he is not quite as worthy of respect, his own or others’, as he would be if he played well. If he is the club champion, he is considered a winner, and thus a more valuable person in our society. It then follows that the intelligent, beautiful, and competent tend to regard themselves as better people. When love and respect depend on winning or doing well in a competitive society, it is inevitable (since every winner requires a loser and every top performance many inferior ones) that there will be many people who feel a lack of love and respect. Of course, these people will try hard to win the respect they lack, and the winners will try equally hard not to lose the respect they have won. In this light, it is not difficult to see why playing well has come to mean so much to us. But who said that I am to be measured by how well I do things? In fact, who said that I should be measured at all? Who indeed?

The answer was quite unexpected. What I really wanted, I realized, was to overcome the nervousness that was preventing me from playing my best and enjoying myself. I wanted to overcome the inner obstacle that had plagued me for so much of my life. I wanted to win the inner game.

I had lost 6–4, 6–4, but I walked off the courts feeling that I had won. I had lost the external game, but had won the game I had wanted to, my own game, and I felt very happy. Indeed, when a friend came up to me after the match and asked how I’d done, I was tempted to say, “I won!”

What is seldom recognized is that the need to prove yourself is based on insecurity and self-doubt. Only to the extent that one is unsure about who and what he is does he need to prove himself to himself or to others.

Instead of trying to win, I decided to attempt only to play beautifully and excellently; in other words, I began to play a rather pure form of Perfect-o. My theory was that I would be unconcerned with how well I was doing in relation to my opponent and absorbed solely in achieving excellence for its own sake. Very beautiful; I would waltz around the court being very fluid, accurate, and “wise.” But something was missing. I didn’t experience a desire to win, and as a result I often lacked the necessary determination. I had thought that it was in the desire to win that one’s ego entered the picture, but at one point I began to ask myself if there wasn’t such a motivation as an egoless desire to win. Was there a determination to win that wasn’t an ego trip and didn’t involve all the fears and frustrations that accompany ego trips? Does the will to win always have to mean “See, I’m better than you”?

I don’t want to promote the idea of playing angry as the key to winning. If there was a key that day it was that I played sincerely. I was angry that evening and instead of trying to pretend otherwise, I expressed it appropriately through my tennis. It felt good, and it worked.

In other words, the more challenging the obstacle he faces, the greater the opportunity for the surfer to discover and extend his true potential. The potential may have always been within him, but until it is manifested in action, it remains a secret hidden from himself. The obstacles are a very necessary ingredient to this process of self-discovery. Note that the surfer in this example is not out to prove himself; he is not out to show himself or the world how great he is, but is simply involved in the exploration of his latent capacities. He directly and intimately experiences his own resources and thereby increases his self-knowledge.

Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached.

who is it that provides the player with the obstacles they need in order to experience their highest limits? The opponent, of course! Then is your opponent a friend or an enemy? They are a friend to the extent that they do their best to make things difficult for you. Only by playing the role of your enemy do they become your true friend.

If you are a nice guy and play his forehand, his backhand will remain weak; in this case the real nice guy is the competitor.

I can’t go up without pushing someone else down. This belief involves us in a needless sense of guilt. You don’t have to become a killer to be a winner; you merely have to realize that killing is not the name of the game. Today I play every point to win. It’s simple and it’s good. I don’t worry about winning or losing the match, but whether or not I am making the maximum effort during every point because I realize that that is where the true value lies.

Thus, for the player of the Inner Game, it is the moment-by-moment effort to let go and to stay centered in the here-and-now action which offers the real winning and losing, and this game never ends.