Bad Calls, Bad Bounces, Bad Luck: Building the Next-Point Mindset

A ball lands on the line. The opponent calls it out. Replay confirms it was in. You lose the point.

How long does that loss take to leave your mind? For some players, 5 seconds — they shake it off, walk back to the baseline, and play the next point with full focus. For other players, the next 3-5 points are ghost matches with phantom opponents: the actual point in front of them is shared with their attention to the bad call from before. They lose the next two points without noticing. The bad call cost one point. The reaction to the bad call cost three more.

This is the next-point mindset problem, and it is one of the most under-trained mental skills in tennis. Players who handle adversity well have specific techniques. Players who don’t have specific patterns that compound losses. Understanding the difference is what separates competitive tennis players from frustrated ones.

What Adversity Looks Like in Tennis

The list of things that can go wrong in a tennis match is long:

• Bad line calls (yours or opponent’s)
• Lucky net cords for the opponent
• Tape rolls and bad bounces
• Mishit shots that land in
• Easy shots missed for unforced errors
• Wind suddenly affecting a shot
• Officiating mistakes
• Crowd noise at the wrong moment
• Equipment failures (racquet break, string break)

Plus the internal adversities:

• Realizing you’re playing badly
• Choking on a critical point
• Falling behind on the scoreboard
• A specific shot suddenly not working

Each of these requires a mental response. The response either lets you play the next point at full quality or it doesn’t. The good response is small, contained, focused on the future. The bad response is large, expansive, focused on the past.

What Bad Responses Look Like

A few common patterns of dysfunctional adversity response:

Pattern 1: Visible frustration. The player slams the racquet, says something audible, glares at the opponent. The behavior is visible and the cognitive load is significant. The next point is partially given away because attention is consumed by the frustration.

Pattern 2: Internal rumination. The player walks back to the baseline silently but their mind is still on the bad call. They’re playing the next point physically but mentally rehearsing the previous one. The execution suffers.

Pattern 3: Compensatory aggression. The player decides to hit harder, take more risks, attack more aggressively to make up for the lost point. The increased risk-taking produces more unforced errors. The losses compound.

Pattern 4: Defensive retreat. The opposite — the player becomes tentative, scared of making more mistakes. They push balls back without intent and let the opponent dictate. The retreat produces more lost points.

Pattern 5: Score-fixation. The player starts watching the score obsessively, calculating how far behind they are, what they need to do to catch up. The cognitive load eats into shot execution.

Each pattern has the same effect: a bad-luck event becomes a multi-point spiral. The player loses far more than just the original lost point.

What Good Responses Look Like

Players who handle adversity well share several characteristics:

Characteristic 1: Physical reset. A specific physical action — bouncing the ball, adjusting strings, walking to the baseline — that closes the previous point. The body’s motion signals the mind to move on.

Characteristic 2: Brief acknowledgment. Internal acknowledgment of what happened (“Yes, that was a bad call. Yes, I’m frustrated.”). Not denial, but not extended rumination either. The acknowledgment is processed and then released.

Characteristic 3: Forward attention. Within 5-10 seconds, attention shifts to the upcoming point. What target am I going to serve? What pattern am I going to set up? The mind has work to do, and it does it.

Characteristic 4: Same level of intent. The next point is played with the same intensity as if the bad call hadn’t happened. Not lower (defensive retreat), not higher (compensatory aggression). Same.

Characteristic 5: Faith in the long view. The player implicitly understands that one point doesn’t determine the match. Even three points don’t determine the match. The match is many points; staying steady over many points produces the outcome.

These characteristics can be trained. They aren’t innate.

The Neuroscience of Adversity Response

Some background on what’s happening biologically:

A bad-luck event triggers an emotional response in the limbic system, particularly the amygdala. The response is automatic, fast, and largely outside conscious control. Cortisol releases. Heart rate may spike briefly. Attention narrows to the threatening event.

What can be trained is what happens next. The prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for executive control — can regulate the emotional response if it has the right tools and practice. Specifically:

• Acceptance. The cognitive recognition that the emotion exists, without resisting it.
• Cognitive reappraisal. Reframing the event from “disaster” to “manageable inconvenience.”
• Attentional control. Deliberately moving attention from the past event to the upcoming task.

Players who practice these skills have measurably different stress hormone profiles after adversity events than players who don’t. The training produces real neural changes.

A Practical Next-Point Routine

The routine I recommend, after a bad-luck event:

Step 1 (5-10 seconds): Physical reset. Walk slowly to the towel or to the baseline. Touch your strings. Take a deeper-than-normal breath. The physical motion creates space between the event and the next point.

Step 2 (5-10 seconds): Internal acknowledgment. Silently to yourself: “That was a bad call. I’m frustrated. That’s normal. Moving on.” Three short sentences. Don’t dwell, don’t argue.

Step 3 (5-10 seconds): Tactical refocus. What’s my plan for the next point? Specific target. Specific shot. The attention has now moved forward.

Step 4 (entering point): Trigger word. A single word that initiates your normal serving or returning routine. “Smooth.” “Release.” Whatever you use. The trigger signals “I am playing tennis now, not processing what just happened.”

Total time: 25 seconds. The standard between-points window. The routine doesn’t slow play; it uses the time efficiently.

How to Train the Mindset

Three drill formats:

Drill 1: Simulated bad calls. In a practice match, a coach or partner deliberately calls some clearly in balls out. The player practices the response routine. Over time, the response becomes automatic.

Drill 2: Disadvantaged scoring. Play points where you start at 0-30 every time. The artificially disadvantaged scoreboard simulates pressure and the need to recover from setbacks.

Drill 3: Mistake-and-continue. After every unforced error in a practice match, force yourself to immediately walk through the next-point routine. The drill builds the habit of separating mistakes from the next point.

After 4-6 weeks of these drills, mental resilience under adversity measurably improves. The skill is teachable, like any other.

What Champions Say

Top players, when asked about handling adversity, consistently report similar approaches:

“You can’t change what just happened. You can change the next point.” “I let myself feel it for one breath. Then I’m back to work.” “Bad calls are part of the game. Bad calls aren’t going to decide the match.” “Every point starts at zero. The previous point is over.”

These aren’t motivational platitudes. They are encoded thinking patterns that produce different behavior than untrained players exhibit.

The Long-Match Dimension

Adversity response matters even more in long matches. Across 3-5 hours, a player experiences many bad-luck events. Each one is a small attention drain. The cumulative effect can be significant — by the third set, players who haven’t managed adversity well are mentally exhausted in ways that go beyond physical fatigue.

The player with a strong next-point mindset arrives at the third set with their cognitive resources intact. The player without it arrives depleted, even if their physical conditioning is identical. The mental management is a fitness skill of its own.

What This Doesn’t Mean

A few clarifications:

It doesn’t mean be a robot. Feelings are normal. The skill is in managing them, not suppressing them. A player who pretends to feel nothing eventually breaks; the pretense uses cognitive resources too.

It doesn’t mean accept everything. If a line call is wrong, you can disagree with it (within the rules of the match). The skill is in not letting the disagreement consume your attention through the next point.

It doesn’t replace tactical adjustments. If you’re losing because of a tactical problem, just resetting mentally doesn’t solve it. Sometimes you actually need to change what you’re doing. Reset isn’t the only response.

It doesn’t make matches easy. Even with perfect adversity management, hard matches are hard. The mindset doesn’t eliminate the difficulty; it just keeps you in a position to compete despite it.

One Thing to Do on Court Tomorrow

In your next practice or match, when something goes against you — a missed shot, a bad bounce, a call you disagree with — deliberately walk through a next-point routine. Physical reset, internal acknowledgment, tactical refocus, trigger word.

Time how long it takes you. The first time, it may take 30-40 seconds — longer than the between-points window. With practice, it compresses into the 25-second window naturally.

Most players, doing this deliberately for the first time, are surprised at how much it changes their experience of the next 2-3 points. The unwanted attention to the past event is replaced by attention to the upcoming task. The match resumes in a way that feels controlled rather than reactive.

Bad luck is part of tennis. The skill is not in avoiding it — you can’t — but in determining how much of your match it costs you. The next-point mindset is what compresses bad luck from a multi-point spiral into a single lost point. It is one of the highest-leverage mental skills in the sport.

About the author: Emre Köse is a tennis coach at Beykoz Tenis Kulübü in Istanbul, with 12+ years on court. He holds a BSc in Coaching Education from Marmara University, Faculty of Sport Sciences.

Related in this series: The between-points routine · Choking: what it is, what causes it, how to reduce it · The retriever’s mental game

Selected reading:

• Hanin, Y. L. (2007). Emotions in sport: current issues and perspectives. Handbook of Sport Psychology.
• Lazarus, R. S. (2000). How emotions influence performance in competitive sports. The Sport Psychologist.
• Jones, M. V. (2003). Controlling emotions in sport. The Sport Psychologist.