In a recent trip to NYC for a USTA camp, the players and coaches who participated in the camp had the opportunity to listen to a talk from a former number one player in the world from the decades of the 80s and 90s. Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario spoke about her upbringing in Spain being a member to one very successful tennis family who included her two older brothers (who also had great success on the tour in both singles and doubles.). Her talk was mostly targeted towards her complete trust towards what her coaches were working on; the clear family approach towards their kids’ tennis; the constant goal setting that she exercised; and the involvement of a sports psychologist during years in which it was considered almost “taboo”.
She was asked questions regarding the awareness that she had at an early age of how good she was going to end up being as a player, and her reply was that she knew that she was good; she did not “know” what her ceiling was, but that she mainly loved playing tennis and working hard, and because of that, she simply followed every instruction from her coaches to the maximum and trusted that this was taking her forward with her game.
She spoke about her family upbringing because having multiple successful kids in one sport clearly shows that some things are done the right way. She said that her mother was her travel companion, and that both parents were very much in charge of their logistics and emotional support, but that there was no “tennis talk” at the house. She said that they were lucky that from an early age, the kids were surrounded by great coaches, and this solidified their team effort by allowing parents to be parents, players to be players, and coaches to be coaches.
Arantxa kept talking about her goals, and her goals, and her goals, and I asked her if she had in fact written those goals down somewhere. She said that she still has all the notebooks where all of her process and results goals were imputed, and that she loves going back to them to get those feelings of a child dreaming while inching her way through constant and incremental progress.
Towards the end of her chat, she mentioned that she ALWAYS worked with a sports psychologist, and that she knew that most of her peers at the high level did the same, but that at the time, it was perceived as a sign of weakness, and this kept them for making it public, but that it did help tremendously because she was going into high levels very fast, and managing that kind of pressure without sacrificing her love for the game was a very tough task for everyone in her team and herself.
I want to clarify that I try to listen to the incredible people that I get to interact with in the game, and I try not to take a position of agreement or disagreement. I feel that these are nuggets of information that at some point will come handy in my constant pursuit to help each and every player and coach in our program. Our program is full of very passionate people, and my goal is to install a mindset for growth and learning because that only by having this kind of mental approach, we can sustain and eventually in our own individual way conquer the long and challenging road ahead.
