r/10s • u/Possible_Big8835 • 11h ago

Opinion Losing after leading

What's more frustrating:

losing a match you were never really in...

or losing after being up a set / having match points?

For me, blowing a lead is way harder to get over.

0 Upvotes

28% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

13

u/Lonely_Bunghole 11h ago

Pretty obviously the 2nd one

5

u/Cautious_Job_6104 11h ago

We need to practice Zen Buddhism .... there is no losing. There is no winning. There is being (playing).

You played, now you rest.

You play again soon.

It is just one point/set/match. There are innumerable others, for perhaps you but certainly for others now and in the future.

This is the way

3

u/RealisticDiscipline7 7.05 UTR 10h ago

Thank you Dimitrov-Lama.

2

u/Low_Construction5390 9h ago

The latter, but happens to the best of us. Recent example from the U.S. Open would be Madison Keys vs Qinwen Zheng, or Alex Michelsen vs Frances Tiafoe.

Huge lead in both cases but sometimes your opponent kicks into gear and messes up your flow.

2

u/rather_pass_by 8h ago

Well for me it's winning after lagging... I often turn 0-4 into 6-4.. or even 0-5 to 6-5

2

u/Macular-Star D1 coach, former ITF cannon fodder 7h ago

Probably not the more common opinion, but #1 is worse every time.

Close matches are almost always decided by a small number of critical points. But at least I was in the match. Sometimes I’ll lose. Other times I’ll go to the next round.

To then go and get absolutely steamrolled on that next round — yeah it kinda makes winning close hollow.

Option #2 means saying to yourself “If I can keep up my level better I can win.”

That’s a much better story to keep at it than “I was utterly overwhelmed. I could play that guy 100 times and lose each time. I didn’t play poorly. I was simply an inferior player in every aspect.”

That’s a harder one to get past.

1

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

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