Every tennis player dreads that sinking feeling when suddenly none of your shots are working, the points begin to slip away, and you start believing you deserve to lose.

The good news: experts say when things start to go wrong during a match, it’s almost never a talent problem. It’s a thinking problem.

Gigi Fernandez, former world number 1 doubles player, two-time Olympic gold medalist, and 17-time Grand Slam champion, estimates that tennis is approximately 80% mental and 20% physical, given that “…the average time of an ATP Tour match is two hours and 45 minutes in a three-out-of-five set match. Of that time, the players are playing a point for only 24 minutes. That means that 84.2% of the time that players are playing, they are not actually playing a point, and this is the same with WTA and recreational matches.”

Here are four tips from leading experts on what to do when your game starts falling apart…

1. Watch the ball — not your mistakes (W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis)

When things go wrong, most players instinctively try harder — concentrating more and analyzing what went wrong—but Gallwey argues this is precisely the wrong response.

The moment a player starts labeling her shots as bad — or worse, as evidence of a larger pattern of failure — she creates tension, and tension destroys the fluidity that good tennis requires. The player berating herself for a missed backhand is already losing the next point before it has started.

Gallwey’s prescription is counterintuitive: observe without judgment. When a ball goes wide, the thought is not “I always do this! What is wrong with me?!” It is simply, “The ball went wide, by about a foot.” No story attached. Just information.

He found that players who learned to observe errors this way corrected them faster than those who analyzed them obsessively, because they were not loading each mistake with emotional weight that interfered with the body's natural ability to adjust.

The practical tool: the “bounce-hit” trick. To stay focused and calm during a match, Gallway recommends a simple technique: each time the ball bounces, the player says the word bounce — silently or aloud. Each time the racquet meets the ball, she says hit. This exercise focuses the judgmental mind on a specific, repetitive, manageable task, allowing the body to play more freely.

When nerves or tightness arrive, give your mind a single concrete thing to track to focus your attention away from the internal commentary that makes everything worse. Look for the words printed on the ball or watch its spin; listen for the sound of contact or count the bounces in the rally.

2. Go back to what was working. (Brad Gilbert, Winning Ugly)

Gilbert argues that when a match starts going wrong, most recreational players do the same thing repeatedly and hope for a different result. He calls it “going brain dead.”

His prescription: identify the last thing that was working before the wheels came off and return to that. Stop improvising under pressure or trying to fix everything at once.

Go back to the one pattern that was producing points earlier in the match and make the opponent beat that — rather than handing the match over by abandoning a winning strategy simply because things got uncomfortable for a few games.

3. Reset between every point.

Fernandez, Gilbert, and Gallwey all recommend establishing a consistent between-point ritual to allow you to refocus on the next point and let go of what’s come before.

Singles players: touch the strings, take two deliberate breaths, walk slowly to the baseline, or repeat a mantra.

Doubles players: high-five, touch racquets, or exchange smiles and a pre-agreed word or phrase.

A ritual like this should be used between every point in every game and is particularly important when things go wrong during a match, when many players unconsciously begin to rush when they are losing.

4. Develop an off-court mindfulness practice.

 Gigi Fernandez cites learning to meditate as the most instrumental tool for coping under pressure:

 “When I was playing a match and I would get really angry and irritated - because you know, back then we didn’t have HawkEye or any of that technology, and I used to get ballistic about the line calls - I would just change that thought for another thought and remove the emotions from it.”

Multiple studies have shown the benefits of mindfulness for athletes. Learning to meditate and spending a few minutes off court each day to train your mind to let go of distractions translates directly into better focus on the court.