The Winning Mentality: Lessons From Tennis For Entrepreneurs

At the end of the day, it comes down to two key questions. how much do you want it? And what are you willing to do to make it happen?

Sports are a gold mine for metaphors, as the hero’s journey plays out in just a few key moments. 

Tennis is a solo sport, just like entrepreneurship and investing. While a tennis player has a team that supports them, it’s down to the player to perform on Matchday. The team can support, encourage the player from the stands, but the player’s got to do all it takes to win on court.

Key Lessons from Tennis

I followed the Australian open 2024 closely earlier this year, and topped that up with Season 2 of Netflix documentary ‘Break Point.’ And I noted some themes that stuck with me:

Emotional Roller-coaster

All players go through the inevitable emotional roller-coaster while they are on tour. They go through the cycle of having a strong belief (sometimes delusion) that they will win a grand slam, followed by self doubt, or feeling like an imposter, or anger when they lose, confusion when they don’t know what to do or moments of arrogance when they are winning. Even the best players go through this cycle, they just control their emotions better than others. 

The Battle Within

While players are battling an opponent, the bigger battle is sometimes against themselves. And some players battle themselves more than they are battling with the opponent. For example, Francis Tiafoe is a talented American player, he’s young and has the potential to be a grand slam champion someday. When I saw him perform, I could see that his performance was volatile on court, he played at a very high level in one set, and in the next set he lost focus and confidence, made unforced errors and unraveled to eventually lose the match.

 In the Netflix documentary, they showed Tiafoe’s mindset before he stepped onto the court for a match. He was nervous, he was doubting himself, he was stressed. And when he entered the court with that heaviness, he started the match poorly. He battled against himself on court, it was Tiafoe v. Tiafoe, before Tiafoe against the opponent. Women’s player Maria Sakari suffers from a similar phenomenon. Talent without temperament is like a wild, uncontrolled stallion; magnificent but ineffective. 

Importance of Self-Belief

Unwavering self-belief is a super power. Games are won and lost in the player’s heads, before they are lost in the open court. Mentality and level headedness are as important to develop as those killer calves. 

As an example, record grand slam holder Novak Djokovic demonstrates these two qualities impressively. He has this incredible self-belief that he’s the best. And he’s proven it over the last two decades. Similarly, Jannik Sinner, the 2024 AO champion, was incredibly level headed in the final, where he came back from a two set deficit to win a five setter against the gritty Medvedev.

Focus Under Pressure

The best players can elevate their belief and performance when they need it the most often during big pressure moments. Djokovic often scores an ace when he’s down a break-point goes in ‘lockdown’ mode in tie-breaks to avoid unforced errors. 

Players get distracted from time to time, while they were on court. Staying laser focused on the game for three to five hours is incredibly difficult. Players minds wavered,  they often started thinking that they were about to win this match, or on the flip side, how they were soon going to lose. It made them lose focus or get nervous.

Applying Tennis Lessons to Entrepreneurship

What the players experience is quite similar to what we sometimes experience as founders or investors. We create seeds of doubt, we have imposter syndrome, we have periods of extreme belief followed by spells of fear and doubt. At times, the biggest battle is you against you.

As a founder of a small e-commerce store, I experience a lot of the same things that the players experienced on court. Some days I wake up and I feel like my business will do really well. Some days I am not so sure. There’s the fear of losing money, which is real, as well as the time investment into something that might potentially turn out to be a dud.

What if there was a similar documentary where founders are replaced by tennis stars and instead of tennis matches, the show captured the mentality of founders going through their daily hustle of as they build something great? It would be such a fascinating show. My guess is that similar themes will be observed. The drive to be the best, the desire to do more each day, the willingness to hustle and push yourself every single day will probably be apparent in founders. Similarly, the emotional rollercoaster of cockiness, delusion, self doubt, anger, frustration, belief, confidence, and then delusion again will also be a common denominator.

Key Takeaways

So, as the viewer of this imaginary founders documentary, I decided to give some advice to myself, the hustling founder:

1. Just as tennis matches are a mental battle, so is entrepreneurship. Your mentality and your focus will have a massive impact on your performance and decisions.
2. Remember, belief is a super power. If you don’t believe in your business, no one else will. And if you do, great things could happen.
3. Be patient. If you want to build a tree, it takes years, if you want to build a forest, it takes decades.
4. Keep hustling. Focus on improving and delivering each day, without looking at outputs/metrics such as sales, traffic, social media likes, profits, etc.
5. It’s okay to go through the emotions. But remember that the emotions are just cyclical, you will go down after a high, and vice versa.
6. Be more level headed. Be more rational. Bring the right mental state to your business each day. Because your mindset will impact your performance and your decision making,

In 2022, Sinner fired his entire team after he lost in the quarter final of a grand slam. Because being in the top 10 wasn’t enough for him, he was desperate to win a grand slam. And he did. 

At the end of the day, it comes down to two key questions. how much do you want it? And what are you willing to do to make it happen? 

I ask myself the same questions.