Tessa's Pre-Match Routine
The same sequence every match, built so a player whose nerves come out as speed arrives calm and plays soft first, instead of finding her touch after she's already down 0-5.
Bag packed: paddle and backup, eye protection, court shoes, water, hat, sunscreen. A real dinner, in bed early. One sentence about tomorrow, then let it go.
A real breakfast, hydration starting early. Keep the house calm; no long "remember to..." list. She tightens up less when the morning is quiet.
Warm-up (before the match)
- Dinks first, cross-court, so the soft touch is the first thing awake.
- Third-shot drops from the baseline, until a few land clean in the kitchen.
- A handful of volleys and drives to feel her hands, then back to one last drop.
She doesn't need to hit hard in warmups. She needs her touch awake and one clean drop in her memory.
Pick one thing to carry in. This season it's usually soft first or patient at the line. One cue is a reminder; five is a lecture that makes her tight.
The paddle tap with her partner starts on the first point, not after the first bad one: tap, breathe, one word, paddle up. The calmer she is between points, the softer her hands stay during them.
After a ball into the net or a lost game, the cue is short: "Soft first." Her hands handle the fast exchanges. The routine's job is to keep nerves from turning every ball into a drive.
Why the sameness matters: Tessa's nerves come out as speed, and speed is exactly what patient teams want from her. A routine she's run a hundred times keeps her touch steady from the first point, so a tournament match feels like a Tuesday at the club. That's the edge.
