How mental coaching helps the pros manage emotions

Not every point in tennis holds the same weight. In basketball, football—most sports, in fact—every point or run harbors the same value, you just add them up. Tennis, though, has more pressure points. Game points. Set points. Match points. Championship points. Win a set point and you may have just earned half of all you needed to win the match.

“That is an enormous swing on one point,” says Allen Fox, former pro player and author of Tennis: Winning the Mental Match. “It doesn't happen in other sports. It would be the same thing, if in basketball, you said after every five minutes the next basket counts 10 points. Gee, that is a big swing. In tennis, all or nothing swings increase the…