Treating every point the same. 

We’ve touched upon some of the aspects of this before in our page on ‘Fear of Failure’ but it’s worth talking about again and again. Whenever you play, do your best to zone out the score or the marker. When playing a friendly, I prefer for the other person to keep score so I can simply ignore it (from time to time you need to listen in just to make sure they’re not taking any liberties of course).

Becoming complacent or nervous

Once you start thinking about the score, all hell breaks loose. No matter how mentally strong you are, you will start to incur subtle changes in your mindset. If you are in the lead, it’s very easy for you to subconsciously step-off and not be quite as sharp or focused, even if you warn yourself and tell yourself to keep it going. Complacency is a real danger. If you are losing, particularly if you are close to being or at game/match ball down, you can start to become tense and make shot selections you wouldn’t usually make. You might become more risky and start going for unnecessary and unrealistic attacking shots or you might go the other way and freeze up and avoid playing an attacking shot when you are in a great position.

Even mid-game it’s very dangerous. Maybe your mind will drift to the end result and you’ll start seeing yourself shaking hands with your opponent in triumph or visualise what the scores will look like on the marker’s sheet or on the club website. All of these are very harmful to your chances, as you’ll start to bring about very real changes in your play.

Let the points take care of themselves

It is easier said than done at times but do your best to focus on simply working your opponent. Focus on making sure that you make them run with every shot you play and focus on making sure that every shot you play is the right one. If you do this, the points will take care of themselves.