{"id":21173,"date":"2026-06-03T09:30:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/how-tennis-players-manage-nerves-and-intrusive-thoughts-with-milestones-on-the-line-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T09:30:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T09:30:50","slug":"how-tennis-players-manage-nerves-and-intrusive-thoughts-with-milestones-on-the-line-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/how-tennis-players-manage-nerves-and-intrusive-thoughts-with-milestones-on-the-line-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"How tennis players manage nerves and intrusive thoughts with milestones on the line – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis
French
Open 2026
LIVE
2m ago<\/span>
Flavio Cobolli said nerves overtook him as he reached the French Open quarterfinals. Tnani Badreddine \/ DeFodi via Getty Images<\/span>
PARIS \u2014 On Monday at the French Open<\/a>, fans on Court Philippe-Chatrier received an unexpected message from the clay below.
\u201cI almost s\u2014 my pants,\u201d men\u2019s quarterfinalist Flavio Cobolli said, after the 24-year-old Italian\u2019s fourth-round win over American Zachary Svajda became more complicated than he, or the crowd, had expected.
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Cobolli led Svajda 6-2, 6-3, 6-7(3), 5-2 when his body started to betray him. Groundstrokes started flying long. His serves slowed down. His feet no longer moved to the places he asked them to. Cobolli lost four games in a row before holding serve to stay in the fourth set and then edging over the line, and into the Roland Garros quarterfinals, in a tiebreak.
\u201cWhen the match is almost done, you start to think,\u201d Cobolli said in a news conference. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem with my character, because I don\u2019t like to think.\u201d
Overthinking \u2014 and underwear anxiety \u2014 is not the only way tennis players experience nerves. They describe wanting to throw up, hands shaking, upper body tensing, shoulders rising. These responses bleed into their tennis. Their reactions become too quick or too slow; their limbs become heavy, the racket weighing in their hands. Spraying forehands, service yips and stuttering footwork ensue.
At this year\u2019s French Open, the air is particularly thick with tension. After a tournament of shocks and upsets, only five top-10 seeds and one Grand Slam champion are left across the men\u2019s and women\u2019s draws. The stakes always get higher deeper into a tournament, but the openness of this year\u2019s draw further complicates matters.
Lower-ranked players are facing unusual situations with less formidable foes in their way, and with that comes expectation. A less foreboding draw might look easier, but when a golden opportunity arises, the voices inside players\u2019 heads get louder. Such a situation can be even more difficult to handle than facing an indomitable champion on the other side of the net.
\u201cIf I think, especially if I\u2019m nervous, I start to play different tennis,\u201d Cobolli said.
The physiology of nerves, and how they affect tennis players and other athletes, starts in the brain: the organ that detects threats.
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\u201cWe are responding to threats in the same way as when we were just about to be eaten by a woolly mammoth thousands of years ago,\u201d sports psychologist Sarah Murray said during a phone interview.
The state of play at this year\u2019s French Open is tied to a pressure dynamic fundamental to tennis. Being the underdog and the top dog is part of every sport, but in tennis, the status is not fixed. Its scoring system, and the lack of a clock, means players have to consistently play from behind and ahead, as well as account for their overall expectations for a match.
The underdog plays with the psychological handbrake off. As a result, Murray, who has worked with Premier League and international soccer players, said their brain is clearer and makes better decisions in the moment, without \u201cfortune-telling\u201d about what might come or what might have happened.
The lowest-ranked player left, women\u2019s world No. 114 Maja Chwali\u0144ska, is channeling that mindset. \u201cI\u2019m an underdog, no one really knows me,\u201d the Polish 24-year-old said in a news conference after reaching the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam for the first time.<\/p>\n

The top dogs, or favorites, are expected to succeed. This can often lead to what Murray calls \u201cthinking traps\u201d: phrases including \u201chave to,\u201d \u201cshould\u201d and \u201cmust.\u201d While a player is playing a point, their brain might start to say: \u201cI could land myself a place in the semifinal for the first time ever.\u201d Such thoughts clutter the mind, which brings less clarity in the moment and prevents them from playing each point on its own terms.
At this French Open, many underdogs have unexpectedly become top dogs. This can lead to a mismatch between expectations and the players\u2019 skills to manage them.
The brain influences the body\u2019s response to nerves as much as that of the mind. Two systems work in tandem. The sympathetic nervous system, colloquially known as fight-or-flight, releases hormones and engages nerves quickly and broadly; the parasympathetic nervous system, referred to as rest-and-digest, is slower and more targeted.
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The former increases excitability and preparedness for movement in response to the tennis equivalent of being assailed by a woolly mammoth. Queue \u201ca whole cascade of events,\u201d said Dr. Montana Jackson, specialist in sport, exercise and musculoskeletal medicine, in a voice note.
Glucose is released into the bloodstream to provide energy, and blood vessels dilate and increase flow to muscles. Adrenaline and noradrenaline, hormones which increase alertness and reaction speed, are also released, but there is a fine balance between readiness and unreadiness.
A significant increase in muscle activation can lead to tension and tremors, and in a sport like tennis, which requires fine motor skills and precision, that can be difficult to control. Increased muscle activation also increases energy expenditure, which can lead to a feeling of heaviness.
Brain activity also increases during a stress response, making movements which are usually automatic less so, and perhaps even slower. In turn, under physical stress, intensified breathing can cause carbon dioxide in the blood to drop too low, which also causes fatigue and weakness.
The stress response can also cause discomfort in the stomach. Adrenaline speeds up peristalsis, the contractions and constrictions of the intestines, while blood is diverted from the digestive system, which can cause nausea.
Then there is the gut-brain axis, which sends biochemical messages between the nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract. The mind starts to affect the body; the body starts to affect the mind. A vicious cycle ensues, which, as Cobolli found out, can have unpleasant-feeling consequences.
At the beginning of his career, two-time Grand Slam doubles champion Harri Heli\u00f6vaara lost his first 10 Davis Cup ties. \u201cI couldn\u2019t handle the nerves,\u201d he said during an interview at Roland Garros. \u201cRecently, I\u2019ve won almost all of them.\u201d
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But the jitters do not go away. The world No. 4 said he feels nerves predominantly in his diaphragm, the most important muscle for breathing. \u201cThat\u2019s where it all starts,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a big bubble of air that just does not want to get out of my system. I want to breathe it out, but it just doesn\u2019t go away.\u201d
The stop-start nature of tennis makes breathing regulation critical for the players. Pauses present not only a greater risk of intrusive thoughts, but also a greater opportunity to recalibrate after the hyper-arousal state of playing a point at full intensity, or experiencing the emotional high or low of winning a set or having their serve broken.
Breathwork coach Nedas, who has worked with some of England\u2019s top men\u2019s Premier League players, encourages athletes to build a solid breathing practice away from playing so they can tap into it more easily in stressful situations.
\u201cThoughts will come,\u201d she said, so the difference-maker is how quickly athletes can remove them from their minds and, in Nedas\u2019 words, be an \u201cemotional ninja.\u201d Such adaptability to a high-stress environment is crucial to success. \u201cIf they don\u2019t know how to keep their mind state in check, there\u2019s a missing piece,\u201d she said.
That\u2019s precisely what Heli\u00f6vaara, the 36-year-old Fin who hired a breathwork coach last year, did. He has also used it to complement another of his mindset approaches: microactions, sometimes of a slightly strange kind.
After his 2024 maiden Wimbledon triumph, with Britain\u2019s Henry Patten, Heli\u00f6vaara\u2019s coach told him he looked like a \u201cpsychopath\u201d \u2014 because he was smiling so much.
\u201cIt tells my body everything is OK,\u201d he said. An intentional shift in physiology, whether it relates to body language, facial expression or even unclenching a fist, can alter an athlete\u2019s emotional state.
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Before a potentially career-defining match, Murray helps athletes identify the source of a narrative. \u201cUsually it\u2019s ourselves,\u201d she said. Such stories, often not true, can be unhelpful.
\u201cThe game of tennis does not change,\u201d Murray said. \u201cIt\u2019s the perception of the game.\u201d
The first step is recognising the story, then using a mantra or cue to let it go. Some players consciously clench their fists when thoughts such as, \u201cIf I lose this set, my chance is gone,\u201d arise and then unclench, a reminder not to cling to imagined outcomes.
As the players left in this French Open head into their tournament-defining matchups, they will all be trying to follow Cobolli\u2019s mantra for the rest of it \u2014 which he expressed right after he held back his nerves just in time.
\u201cIt\u2019s my first time, and the experience is not high. Sometimes you have to pass this moment to have a better chance to improve in the next one.\u201d
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TennisFrenchOpen 2026LIVE2m agoFlavio Cobolli said nerves overtook him as he reached the French Open quarterfinals. Tnani Badreddine \/ DeFodi via Getty ImagesPARIS \u2014 On Monday at the French Open, fans on Court Philippe-Chatrier received an unexpected message from the clay below.\u201cI almost s\u2014 my pants,\u201d men\u2019s quarterfinalist Flavio Cobolli said, after the 24-year-old Italian\u2019s fourth-round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}