How come I feel so bad when Roger Federer loses?

I wonder why I feel so bad when Roger Federer loses…..especially to the likes of Tomas Berdych. I was watching the Sony Ericson Open in Key Biscayne, Florida last night on the tennis channel and I really thought Federer was going to crush Berdych in the last set. When he didn’t. I was crushed.

Maybe it’s because I relate to Federer so much….certainly not with my tennis skills, but with my admiration for his generosity, humble character and great sportsmanship.

I’m glued to the tennis channel most evenings with my laptop on my lap where I’m either working or logged on to one of the many tennis membership sites I belong to like http://www.CoachKyrilTennis.com . As I watched Roger lose I did notice one thing that I think we could all learn from.

When Roger really cranked his first serve he was hitting it into the net. It was like you could see that he wanted to put Berdych in his place. You could see his entire body tense up to hit the serve as hard as humanly possible ……and then. Boom! Right into the net.

The lesson for all of us is that if the number one guy in the world can’t play tense, then how can we expect to play tense and try to overhit. For us big people we have to totally remind ourselves to STAY SMOOTH both to conserve energy which is critically important for us and to execute our strokes properly.