'If you are ready to accept the good match and lose, then you are ready to win'

Life lessons from tennis

Last Sunday I went to Wimbledon. At the very last moment and after lots of web page refreshing we bought tickets for No.2 Court, which meant no queuing for a grounds pass and couple more hours of sleep!

No.2 Court is a show court but one that you will rarely hear anyone showing off about having tickets for (even though they should). This is a significantly smaller show court which means you are much closer to the players and that allowed me to see things I wouldn’t have noticed on a bigger stage.

The second match of the day on this court was a fourth round ladies singles match between Solana Sierra and Laura Siegemund. I knew little about either woman before watching this match, but it turns out both had a story to tell.

Sierra was the first women’s ‘lucky loser’ to make it to the fourth round at Wimbledon. This means that she didn’t originally qualify, but someone else dropped out at the very last minute giving her a chance in the first round. In the second round she beat Britain’s Katie Boulter and then went on to victory in three sets over Cristina Busca in the third round. So quite a journey to this stage of the competition for the Argentinian 21-year old.

At the other end of the court was Laura Siegemund, the 37-year old German.

The match began and initially I could feel myself drawn more to the young Argentinian, willing her on as I watched from our amazing second row seats. Siegemund had a few habits that started to emerge and I found myself getting annoyed by them.

In tennis, players have a 25-second time limit in which to serve and there is a countdown clock on the screen. If a player takes longer than the allotted time, they first receive a warning and if it happens again they forfeit a point.

Siegemund followed a very precise routine each time she served. She stepped once inside the baseline and then out again (hokey-cokey esque), bounced the ball at least 5 times, paused for a few seconds and took some deep breaths in and then launched the ball into the air before hitting it. Without fail, this took almost all of the 25 seconds and I could see the chair umpire watching closely; poised and ready to give a violation if necessary.

I found this quite infuriating to begin with. Why did she need to take so long? Couldn’t she see that this was off putting to her opponent? Doesn’t she understand the rules?

But most times, Siegemund would get her first serve in and win the point. The routine worked for her. And of course it was off putting for her opponent - that was the point.

Miraculously, in this match, Siegemund didn’t get a single time violation.

The weather on Sunday was exactly what you would imagine British summertime weather to be. One minute blazing sunshine, the next huge storm clouds, even a biblical thunderstorm at one point. As such, this match suffered two rain delays (meaning we got to see the covers speedily hauled over the pristine grass as the heavens opened - always an impressive spectacle).

That had to be tough for the players. Just when you’ve got into a rhythm and things are going well you are forced to stop, not really knowing when it might restart again. Fortunately, the rain didn’t last for long and play resumed reasonably quickly.

Still, Siegemund kept to the exact same routine when serving and continued to dance around the court unafraid to come to the net and force Sierra into positions she wasn’t keen on.

This continued until Siegemund won the match 6-3 6-2, quite comfortably.

By the end of the match, I felt stupid for having had those initial thoughts about Siegemund’s ‘habits’. What became clear to me as this match went on was that this was a woman unafraid to show up and use everything available to her to attempt to win. And win she did.

She knew that she had 25 seconds to serve and used every single one of those seconds to her advantage.

It got me thinking about how often we play small, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves and yet where does that get us? Certainly not into the quarter finals at Wimbledon!

At the end of the match, Siegemund was interviewed on the court and I found her speech to be very inspiring:

Interviewer: Laura, congratulations. Into the quarter finals for the first time. How much was that match about your level, and perhaps your experience, things like coming back and breaking every time we had those rain delays. How did you this match?

Laura Siegemund: Honestly, I think for me this was the toughest match… first round I was just happy to be in the main draw again and I just tried to work my game and I didn’t feel like I had to win the match. And then the next matches, I was always the underdog in every single match, and this is the first time that on the paper, at least, kind of even. I watched her [Solana Sierra’s] previous matches and she’s really, really aggressive. Great player. Half my age, almost! So we will see much more from her, that’s for sure. But the way she plays, I knew it was going to be very difficult for me. I’m just super happy I managed so well.

I: She’s 21 years old. She’s had a great run. But for you, having not been past the second round before is there anything different you’ve been doing with your team to try and make that happen, because clearly it’s worked this time?

LS: Actually we’re pretty much doing the same thing for a couple of years. We have a great host family that became great friends and they support me and come out here so it feels very nice - the non-hotel atmosphere - and it’s here in Wimbledon so that’s super nice. It’s been like that the last few years. And in my team, nothing has changed, it’s very small. It’s my boyfriend and me and a physio. But, yeah, not much has changed. I’ve said it before, I felt I could do better than losing second round. I had some really good matches in the last years but I just didn’t get the win. So I came with no expectations and I just worked on some things in my game - obviously - and they seemed to work better this year.

I: You’ve mentioned age, so I think it’s ok for me to say you are 37, the oldest female left in the draw now. [huge cheer from the crowd] That’s one of the biggest rounds of applause of the week!

LS: I wanted to say, it’s not that often you get such a compliment for being old!

I: You’ve also got a psychology degree, you’ve talked about the house here. How much do you think all of this is perhaps you viewing tennis and this tournament a little differently this time?

LS: I’ve been saying in many, many interviews over many, many years that a psychology degree in this kind of moment is worth absolutely nothing. Everyone who is good in their job, is a pro in whatever they do, they know that knowing something and being able to perform are two completely different things. If not, everybody who knew how to play a forehand would play an amazing forehand… I’m just mentally very tough and I’m a fighter and I’ve learned to stay in the moment. I’m just focusing on me, there is not much more I have to prove. There are some moments where you want to win so bad, you get greedy and it’s very important to get rid of that greed. If you are ready to accept the good match and lose, then you are ready to win. That’s what I’m trying to remember in the big moments.

I: Ladies and gentlemen, Laura Siegemund!

Here is a short clip I took of the interview:

Siegemund went on to face Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter finals, a match that she didn’t win. It was very interesting, given my initial feelings, to hear Sabalenka speak in her post match interview, correcting Lee McKenzie when she referred to Siegemund’s game as ‘annoying’. You can watch it here.

I’m in awe of the determination of these powerful women, both in their mental and physical prowess. Maybe I’ll even dust off the tennis racket this summer.

And, just to back up Laura Siegemund’s point on ‘being ready to accept the good match and lose’, she earned £400,000 in prize money for making it to the quarter finals. That’s certainly not a loss and I think we must remember this as a metaphor for life.

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