During hours-long matches, the moment before serving can feel enormous.
Emma Navarro looked toward the blue sky, fully prepared to use all 25 seconds before her next serve, after falling behind in the second set of her opening match Monday at the DC Open.
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After her moment of Zen concluded, she turned and paced toward the south wall of the Rock Creek Tennis Center’s stadium. With 15 seconds left, the women’s world No. 26 traced back and placed her foot along the baseline. Then, a heavy breath, her eyes closed. And before her toss, a mental note.
See the ball on contact.
More so than almost any other professional sport, tennis is a game of intricacy and boredom. Play occurs for only roughly 20 minutes of a two-hour match. The 25 seconds between each moments-long point are spent in a mental world of consistency. Every breath appears weighed, each step follows a mapped route. No muscle shifts without a calculus of its impact.
“We can kind of be psychos,” Navarro said. “But you want to make sure you’re as present as possible.”
How does one achieve that?
“Who honestly knows?”
What tennis players think about in the 25 seconds between the end of one rally and the echoing slap that commences the next ranges dramatically. The goal for each is the same: an ever-allusive feeling of sheer rhythm, unmitigated by the break in play. The path to achieving such a feeling, though, can bring some to obscure places.
For a star like Taylor Fritz, the men’s world No. 10, these moments are spent shrugging off the weight of the crowd. When he turns from facing the net to walk toward his baseline, more eyes in the nearest square mile are trained on him than any other coordinate. The DC Open only amplifies that feeling, as every player walks through the general public to and from their matches. Albeit, you grow accustomed to walking among the lights and cameras and whatnot, Fritz said. But you can feel it.
“So I try to breathe,” he continued. “It’s a moment for me to settle down, calm myself, focus on what I have to do next.”
He deploys breathing exercises, which have become favorites among tennis and golf athletes who spend more time thinking about what they’ll do than actually doing it. Navarro also said she’s partaken in the exercises. Her issue: “You spend more time thinking about the breathing than the actual play.”
Whew. Here lies the central vortex that wraps up tennis players tighter than the stringing on their rackets.
In short: If the sole objective is to find this abstruse state known among athletes as “flow,” then the mind could venture to one of two places.
The first school of thought is that a player should be present and interactive with what’s occurring in the game. In that space, they can come to terms with success and failure, adapt and move forward.
The second line of thinking demands that a player do everything they can to focus on something that isn’t what’s occurring. Multiple studies have found that the easiest way to suffocate a stress loop is to focus elsewhere or find someone to confide in. On the court, you’re alone. So allowing one’s mind to float away could be the best option.
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“I tend to think you want to know what’s going on,” Ashlyn Krueger said. “You shouldn’t be consumed by it, but recognizing what’s happening is what lets you change things.”
When Krueger was 17, her parents told her she could give professional tennis a run — but if she hadn’t found success in two years, she’d find herself in a college dorm instead. In the five years since, she’s risen through the professional rankings enough to redirect their concerns, entering this week at No. 67.
“Because of my background, I think I can see the bigger picture,” she said. “Each point only means so much as long as you stay focused.”
To accomplish that, she talks to herself. Nearly every player at the DC Open, no matter their mental philosophy, carries a personal dialogue. Krueger likes to tell herself “good shot.” Navarro has calming mantras she sets before each match, which she’ll say before every point to conjure a sense of regularity.
World No. 8 Ben Shelton takes a different approach. “I’ll kick myself,” he said, “and then laugh.”
Self-doubt is a regular attendee in these 25 glorious seconds. Coming to terms with it is how those like Shelton survive.
“You just need to be able to move on,” he said. Krueger agreed: “It’s all self-confidence.”
Some think of family members and coaches they associate with joy and success. Others choose objects around venues to focus on. Surely, someone spends those valuable paces debating what, among the capital’s plentiful options, they want for dinner. (Note: The Washington Post was unable to source any confessions.)
After her self-command Monday, Navarro won the next four games and finished Sofia Kenin, 6-0, 7-5. Nearly half of her victories this year have required three sets, so the 1:39 match was a nice change of pace.
“It comes from consistency,” she said. “However you can achieve it.”
Navarro alternates what she says to herself between points, depending on the opponent and style she’ll need to play. Reiterating what she’s trained can’t hurt, she figured.
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But recently, one message has become a staple of her serve-receive routine.
Commit to it, and trust it.
