Yesterday’s post ended with a problem. Experience helps tennis players develop patterns and defaults that make many decisions easier, but no default works all the time. Eventually, we encounter a situation where the accumulated evidence suggests that our normal response may no longer be the best one. Recognizing when that has happened requires judgment.
Unlike practicing a stroke or doubles pattern, judgment is harder to rehearse because the circumstances keep changing. A crosscourt forehand that has worked all afternoon may become less effective once an opponent starts anticipating it. At 5-5 in the third set, we have to recognize that change and decide whether there is enough evidence to do something different.
This is where rigid adherence to a strategy can become every bit as problematic as changing tactics too quickly. May’s discussion of adaptability explored one side of this problem. We do not want to abandon something that is working because of a couple of unusual outcomes. At some point, however, accumulating evidence can justify a change. There is no universal number of points after which data and evidence officially become compelling. We have to interpret what we are seeing.
Score also changes the calculation. A shot that makes sense at 40-love may be less attractive at 30-40 because the consequences of an error are different. That does not necessarily mean becoming conservative on every important point. If aggression has been producing an advantage throughout the match, suddenly pushing the ball into the middle of the court on break point may be the greater risk. Judgment requires understanding which risks make sense in the situation rather than simply trying to avoid them.
I don’t know about your opponents, but mine steadfastly refuse to play an entire match cooperating with my strategy. In doubles, attacking the weaker player may work beautifully for a while. Then something changes. Maybe that player starts handling the pressure better, or the stronger partner begins poaching more aggressively to protect them. At that point, continuing to pound balls at the same target may mean overlooking better opportunities that have developed elsewhere on the court.
Fatigue can also change what constitutes a reasonable choice. Late in a long match, a shot or pattern that worked well an hour earlier may require movement or execution that is no longer as reliable. The tactic itself has not necessarily become worse. Our ability to execute it has changed, and our decisions need to reflect the game we have available at that moment.
I suspect this is one reason experienced players sometimes struggle to explain exactly why they made a particular choice. The answer may involve years of accumulated observations that have become difficult to separate. Court position, opponent tendencies, score, and confidence in a particular shot all contribute something. The player does not necessarily assign a value to each factor before deciding. Experience has simply made more of the situation recognizable.
There is a danger here as well. Calling something “judgment” can become an easy way to justify whatever we wanted to do anyway. The fact that a decision felt right in the moment does not make it immune from later examination. After the match, we have the luxury of looking at what we knew at the time and asking whether our reasoning made sense. Friday’s warning still applies. We should resist allowing the eventual result to answer that question for us.
This is also where mistakes become useful. A decision can be reasonable and fail, but repeated poor decisions can reveal gaps in how we are reading situations. Perhaps we react too quickly to a few unusual points. Maybe we continue with a familiar pattern long after an opponent has adjusted to it. Recognizing those tendencies gives us something specific to work on the next time a similar situation appears.
Over this September weekend, we have moved from results to patterns and finally to judgment. Better decision-making does not give us certainty, and tennis would probably be considerably less interesting if it did. What it can do is improve the reasoning behind the choices we make when certainty is unavailable.
There will still be mishits that land on the line, perfectly constructed points that end with missed sitters, and opponents who produce shots we had no reason to expect. Luck remains part of the game. Our job is to make enough good decisions that we do not require quite so much of it.
