In a typical match, players are hitting the ball for roughly 20% of the time. The other 80% is what happens between points, and what’s going on in our minds.
According to Dr. James E. Loehr, a pioneering sports psychologist who worked with Olympians and tennis legends including Monica Seles and Jim Courier, that gap is where matches are won or lost.
“It is one thing to possess the physical skills and yet another to be able to use them when it counts,” Dr. Loehr wrote in Mental Toughness Training for Sports: Achieving Athletic Excellence. “In the final analysis, every athletic contest is a contest of control, control of the delicate mind-body connection.”
Using biometric data, Loehr found that the best tennis players were intense and focused during play but showed a remarkable ability to recover during the brief 25-second windows between points, using rituals to manage rising heart rates and adapt to stress. Poor competitors used that downtime unwisely, failing to relax or compounding the stress by disputing calls or showing emotion.
From that research, he developed the 16-Second Cure: a repeatable, four-stage set of habits to run through between every point.
1. Positive response. The instant a point ends, win or lose, stand up tall and walk with purpose. Head up, shoulders back. This isn't about how you feel — it's about telling your nervous system you're fine. Loehr instructed players to mimic the “matador walk,” the confident strut of Spanish bullfighters in the ring.
2. Relaxation. Shake out any tension in your hands or shoulders. Direct your eyes to your strings or the ground, not the scoreboard. Calm your breathing and loosen any tense parts of your body.
3. Preparation. Pick one specific thing to do in the next point: where you'll place your serve, whether you will poach, where you will hit your return. Not "play well." A specific “job” that you will perform.
4. Rituals. Develop rituals that you can repeat between every point, like touching the strings, adjusting your visor, a set number of ball bounces, smoothing the court surface, or smiling.
For doubles teams: individually follow all four steps and make step 4 a ritual you and your partner share — a racquet tap, a word, even just eye contact — so you're resetting as a team, not just individually. One partner spiraling after a bad point drags both of you down; a shared reset stops that before it spreads.
The key to success: the 16-Second Cure must be used after every point, not just the ones you lose. It must become automatic, so that when you’re under intense pressure, your body and mind work together to help you.
