No more attack. No more defense. No more control. Just play
For years, high-performance tennis has been framed as a battle. Everything seems to come down to attack or defend, impose or resist, win or lose.
And without realizing it, we’ve turned tennis, a creative and vibrant game, into a fight ruled by fear. Fear of losing. Fear of failing. Fear of not meeting expectations. Fear of not being enough.
This fear wears many disguises:
Strategy. Consistency. Hard work. Discipline. Control
But underneath all of it lies one truth: the player has abandoned the game.
What happens when the player only seeks safety?
When a player steps onto the court from fear, their first instinct is to seek control. And in order to control, they rely on structures. Attack. Defense. Counterattack.
The problem isn’t the tool. It’s how it’s used.
When strategy becomes armor, it no longer serves the game, it serves the ego. And the ego doesn’t want to play. The ego wants to survive.
Attack or defend aren't decisions… they're conditioned responses
In the mind of a player trapped by fear, every action is pre-programmed. They attack out of necessity. Defend out of fear. Counterattack to protect.
Every move is shaped by a need to control the match, to avoid mistakes, to chase a result. And what was once spontaneous creation becomes rigid repetition.
The player stops creating the game and starts surviving the match.
But there is another way of being on court
And it doesn’t begin with tactics. Or technique. It begins in the body. In the internal rhythm. In the ability to associate sensations, decisions, and actions without needing to control them.
Attack, defense, and counterattack can become acts of creation… If they are born in the moment, not from fear. If they respond to life, not to a pre-set plan. If they are guided by presence, not by outcome.
Real play begins when we stop fighting
When the player stops imposing, stops resisting, stops needing a result… and begins to feel the game. To associate in real time. To move without fear. To create without chasing victory.
That player is not protecting themselves from the match. They are inhabiting it.
The match stops being a battlefield… and becomes a space for creation
No more rigid structures as shields. No more formulas as crutches. No more struggle as identity.
When a player relates to the match as a living creative space, not something to conquer, a new form of competition emerges. One that is freer, deeper, and more real.
True tennis is not safe.
True tennis is not predictable. True tennis is not a formula.
True tennis is a living creation, born the moment the player lets go of fear and starts to trust movement, body, and intuition.
And from there: No more control. No more struggle. No more empty patterns. Just play.