Winners Don’t Win: Pt. 2
Winston
Intention is always more important than outcome.
– Winston Ramsay –
If you put yourself in a place to win points with consistency, you still won’t make every shot, but you will put yourself in a position to win a match. Point-to-point, your job on the court is not to win. Your job is to play in a winning way.
The paradox arises, then, that in order to win, your ultimate job is to learn to lose. Everybody — even Rafa and Serena — loses. Points. Games. Sets. Matches. Their minds.
The only true winner is an ace. A returned serve guarantees a point goes 3 shots, and things begin to even out. Get a point to the 5th or 6th shot, and it’s anybody’s game. If the point ends on a shot that your opponent(s) can’t get a racquet on, you get credit for a winner. But that shot was just the last in an improvised sequence.
The “winner” didn’t really win the point. The winning shot required anticipation and strategy. It may even have been set up by a point a few games back.