Tennis Hits the Books
The fact that I am writing about Loving the Battle by Mark Tjia this week is an unanticipated side effect of the review I posted last week. Last week’s selection remains a mystery, and I continue to decline to name either the book or the author since my comments were less than flattering. That omission triggered a couple of guesses as to the identity of the book. One of the guesses started “Surely you don’t mean Loving the Battle…”
To be clear, the book I wrote about last week was NOT Loving the Battle.
It almost fits the profile I described last week. Loving the Battle is a relatively thin and self-published book. The author, Mark Tjia, played NCAA Division I tennis at Texas Christian University. The book was published in 2005 places it into the relative timeframe when the previously reviewed book was published.
I also indicated that the author was still relatively young. Mark Tjia is probably only about four years my junior. I am flattered if anyone slots either one of us into the young category. Another fact that doesn’t quite fit the profile is that Tjia penned his book ten years after he concluded his collegiate and professional playing career. He spent those intervening years coaching others. His book reflects a seasoned perspective that was absent from last week’s selection.
Loving the Battle is a book on the psychological side of tennis that is directed to an audience that finds The Inner Game of Tennis to be to much woo woo mumbo jumbo. To some, the classic books on mental tennis simply don’t resonate. Loving the Battle is the essential book for those players.
Somewhat uncommon to the genre, Tjia is completely up front with the fact that he never felt that he fully mastered mental tennis. He did, however, get a lot better at it over time. The paradox of tennis mental training books is that those that claim to have all the answers, most likely do not. Those that describe the ongoing struggle is where credibility lives.
What Tjia presents in his book is essentially a psychological framework for thinking about competition. It describes the mechanisms he developed, practiced, and refined over his playing career. It is important to making winning your intention without letting it dominate your attention.
What it boils down to at the playing level, is that to play effective tennis you have to learn to embrace the challenge of competition and value that challenge over the outcome of the immediate match at hand. Only then is it possibly for a player to perform at their best. In other words, Loving the Battle
When Loving the Battle was rendered as a guess as to the identity of the book I wrote about last week, I knew that I had to write about it right away to ensure that there was no confusion. I hold the book in very high esteem. The only thing that has prevented me from writing about it any sooner is because there don’t appear to be any copies currently available on the open market. I didn’t want to write about a great book that no one can actually buy. It seems unsportsmanlike.
Mark Tjia is currently coaching the women’s tennis team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I reached out to him directly about the book earlier this week and learned that he still has a few printed copies in his possession. So if anyone is really interested, there is probably a way to get a copy.
It you want to improve your mental game and the The Inner Game of Tennis didn’t resonate with you, then Loving the Battle is the logical next step. The information presented is invaluable. The writing is really good, and it’s a relatively fast read.
email me at marktjia@uab.edu and I can send one to you.
I would love to get a copy of the book!