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Mental Strength of the Top 10

6K views 44 replies 27 participants last post by  Matmagix 
#1 ·
With the absence of Serena or a dominant player in the WTA, mental strength will likely be the key factor for success in the near term. How would you rank the current top 10 (minus Serena) in terms of mentality?

Here is my list:

(1) Pliskova (by far the best, ice water runs through her veins)
(2) Svitolina (Halep choke could lower her ranking)
(3) Konta (mechanical, but effective, still subject to some emotional breakdowns)
(4) Wozniacki (can seldom win the match, but does not beat herself)
(5) Halep (improving, but mentality still a net negative)
(6) Kuznetsova (takes flakey to a whole new level)
(7) Kerber (very little confidence or belief at the moment)
(8) Cibulkova (pressure to remain a top player has crippled her)
(9) Radwanska (not emotionally present this year)
 
#3 ·
Pliskova - good so far, starting to make slam runs
Svitolina - hard to tell, just recently getting to this level
Konta - erratic, need to see a few more majors
Wozniacki - needs to make more slam runs outside NY
Halep -never been better
Kuznetsova - disappointing clay season and should have won IW, but a nice run at her age
Kerber - great last year, can never take that away from her
Cibulkova - great for her height
Radwanska - trying to avoid whats happening to Jankovic
 
#10 ·
Pliskova - good so far, starting to make slam runs
Svitolina - hard to tell, just recently getting to this level
Konta - erratic, need to see a few more majors
Wozniacki - needs to make more slam runs outside NY
Halep -never been better
Kuznetsova - disappointing clay season and should have won IW, but a nice run at her age
Kerber - great last year, can never take that away from her
Cibulkova - great for her height
Radwanska - trying to avoid whats happening to Jankovic
:rolls::haha:

Right about Pome. She may lose tough matches but her fortitude and belief is great and we've seen this before. See how she beat K. Pliskova at IW while being battered, saving BP after BP. Perhaps this year her level isn't there but she still fights, Makarova at AO found out how tough she can be down in that second set.
 
#14 ·
I think mentally tough is different than never giving up. They overlap in part.

I just think a bigger part of being mentally tough is how you play when you're ahead and on important points (Down BP, your own BP, MP, SP etc...) rather than how you play when you're getting destroyed in a match.
 
#7 ·
TPFKAAK (The Player Formerly Known As Angelique Kerber) was a mixture of extremely mentally tough and highly negative who would float effortlessly between fighting with her last breath when down match point and tanking entire matches. At her best, she's super mentally tough (see AO, W, USO 2016). At her worst, she's barely above Bernard Tomic in terms of tanking. In 2017 she's just a mess mentally and I suspect something may have happened in her life off court that's affecting her.

Svitolina is pretty mentally tough minus the Halep choke, which was truly horrendous

Halep is mentally strong at times but overall not too consistent with her mental approach.

Pliskova is pretty calm, being a robot and all.

Wozniacki is very extremely tough. I guess it's to do with being such a defensive player - it's harder to be aggressive in tough moments than it is to get the ball back in play.

Konta to me seems like someone who is full of OCD and anxiety but has developed rituals (ball bouncing, grunting) to cover it up. If those routines don't work, I feel like she kind of implodes. Also the crying in Fed Cup was a bit worrying (the incident was definitely terrible, don't get me wrong - but crying and running off court is something I can't see Serena or Venus doing).

Cibulkova is all about being positive and full of crazy energy, so she's quite intimidating to play against. Overall I don't think she's a mental giant (lol) though.

Kuznetsova is mentally tough but she has a lot of off-days so it rarely matters.

Radwanska is mentally tough too, but obviously isn't much of a factor in 2017.





Pliskova and Wozniacki are the toughest on a consistent basis for me.
 
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#19 ·
I completely agree with @Riskiick

When you're down it's much easier to be free, and to be honest most players actually do play well when they're down and 'fight-back'. It's just way too common a trait to say that it's even close to most important for mental strength. To me seeing how a player handles himself/herself in winning situations is the best indicator.

Pliskie for the top-10 now :cheer:
 
#23 · (Edited)
For years we've been saying in Konta's forum that if she wasn't so mentally weak she would easily be top 100 and maybe even top 50 (even the most optimistic of fans never thought she would reach top 10). So what she has achieved in the past two years has been nothing short of remarkable from where she mentally was to where she currently mentally is. Of course other areas of her game have massively improved too but you could argue that that is a direct result of her improved mental toughness.

The career's of the other top tenners followed a more traditional path and so their mentality has not been put under the same spotlight as Konta's. So in a way it's still quite hard to compare because at this stage it's still apples and oranges.

Maybe these past couple of months have been the first real cracks in her mental toughness, or maybe it's just the fact that she's playing on two surfaces that she is not completely comfortable on, and playing an entire month in her home country too, and maybe come the USO series she'll pick up where she left off in Miami. Who knows, times will tell. I'm really hoping for the latter :angel:
 
#24 ·
Konta's rise up the rankings was hugely part of a flinty resolve that made her so much more consistent. However, didn't her mental coach commit suicide last year? You have to wonder if that affected her? I was surprised how poorly she handled the pressure in the Nottingham final, arguing pretty petulantly with the umpire about the lines. I agree that she has done so well by overcoming mental frailties rather than naming her as a player I think of as mentally strong.

Pliskova is the coolest, but in some ways that isn't always a strength. Obviously things have changed since the USO last September but she doesn't necessarily raise her game at the key moments as the true champions do. Is it mental strength or just not showing emotions?

For me, any of the players who do that shouting at themselves and their box when they lose a point is annoying and indicative oF mental frailty and immaturity. Kerber's success last year was coupled with her stopping doing that and being determined and focussed. Angie was one of the worst self moaners!
 
#27 ·
With the absence of Serena or a dominant player in the WTA, mental strength will likely be the key factor for success in the near term. How would you rank the current top 10 (minus Serena) in terms of mentality?

Here is my list:

(1) Pliskova (by far the best, ice water runs through her veins)
(2) Svitolina (Halep choke could lower her ranking)
(3) Konta (mechanical, but effective, still subject to some emotional breakdowns)
(4) Wozniacki (can seldom win the match, but does not beat herself)
(5) Halep (improving, but mentality still a net negative)
(6) Kuznetsova (takes flakey to a whole new level)
(7) Kerber (very little confidence or belief at the moment)
(8) Cibulkova (pressure to remain a top player has crippled her)
(9) Radwanska (not emotionally present this year)
This is an interesting thread.

Whilst I agree on Pliskova re mental strength - it is difficult to isolate "mental strength" from the "serve". The fact is that if you have a great serve - you can very often get out of trouble by banging down a couple of unreturnable serves. If you took away her serve - would she still be top of your list? Don't answer that because it's all hypothetical if's and the fact is she has a great serve.

But Mental Strength is undoubtedly a lot easier to have when you have a great serve. The two are interlinked because someone without that serve will need more mental strength to consistently get out of trouble and refuse to be beaten.
 
#29 ·
I didn't want to create a new thread, but sometimes I really wonder about the mentality of Barty and Bertens.
I really like both players and both as persons.
But somehow I wonder If they really have the will enough for more titles?
When you compare them to Serena Williams, Sharapova or Bartoli, its just another world.
Andreescu also showed - beside her great talent and tennis skills - a huge will to win this tournament.

When I remember Barty playing in her early career and then retire I get the feeling she could get to this point again.
That she just don't like to be in the focus that much, to be in the media that much.
And with Bertens I also think her problems are only mental. In the last months since the French Open,
she played so strange. The strangest match was of course that French Open match where she retired.

What are your thoughts about Barty and Bertens when it comes to will/mental strength?

Of course it seems logical that any player at any time wants to win matches. But there are huge differences between the players.
 
#32 ·
I didn't want to create a new thread, but sometimes I really wonder about the mentality of Barty and Bertens.
I really like both players and both as persons.
But somehow I wonder If they really have the will enough for more titles?
When you compare them to Serena Williams, Sharapova or Bartoli, its just another world.
Andreescu also showed - beside her great talent and tennis skills - a huge will to win this tournament.

When I remember Barty playing in her early career and then retire I get the feeling she could get to this point again.
That she just don't like to be in the focus that much, to be in the media that much.
....Bartoli? The one who retired within weeks of winning her lone slam?

But seriously, looking at Barty in particular, I don't think it's a matter of commitment, of will to win more titles, or even of choking, although I don't think she's the most reliable player to serve out a close match. The bigger problem is, for a player with as much variety as she has, she is still dependent on a few crucial things.

For a short player, she is uniquely dependent on her serve. In order to use the slice effectively to carve up the court, and in order to use the forehand to bully an opponent around, she needs to be serving well, and she's thrown in a few poor serving performances in the middle of tournaments. Her losses at both Wimbledon and the US Open were largely down to her serve percentage dipping way too low to win. The number of players who can beat her in a baseline war of attrition is much higher than the number of players who can beat her in a match when she's at her high level of serving.

Other players with excellent serves have other elements that can bail them out. Barty's game flows from the serve into everything else, and so while she never is exactly a serve bot, she's more disadvantaged than others when she's not on.
 
#33 · (Edited)
The "mental strength" cannot be investigated ISOLATED from the "mental capacity".
In order to prove this otherwise trivial relation, let's imagine a dead something, for instance the tennis racket. Does the racket have any nerves, or mental collapses in critical situations? NO. Does it make more unforced errors or bad shot selections, whatever? NO. The racket doesn't have any mentality at all.
==> THEREFORE

In order to judge the MENTAL STRENGTHS of the players, first we have to judge their MENTAL CAPACITIES. Because the mental strength is defined like this:
MENTAL STRENGTH = How well a given player can sustain her mental capacity (focus, smart thinking, creativity and determination) in critical situations.
So, it is basically a RATIO of the MAXIMUM mental capacity to the sustained mental capacity.

Furthermore:
The wast majority of the girls can lose their mental capacity in certain situations, but not in the same situations. For instance, a girl may lose her smart-aggressive thinking in WINNING SITUATIONS (typical to Halep), or in HOT-HUMID ENVIRONMENTS (typical to Halep), or when the opponent was totally misjudged (typical to Halep), while other girls may lose their fighting spirit in LOSING SITUATIONS (the majority of the girls), their PATIENCE IN TIGHT SITUATIONS (by the way, this paints the line between the average and the top girls), or may lose their ability to HAVE A MENTAL RESET after having produced a string of bad errors. And there are many-many more mental aspects.

If we want to investigate purely the mental aspects, we have to count down the differences coming from the different bodies, in other words the effects of the TALLER, LARGER, STRONGER, QUICKER, and FITTER bodies. Also, we have to count down the major differences of the SKILLS if they are not mental-related. So, it is NOT easy at all to make fair "mental strength" comparison between the girls. But we can do it, if we compare otherwise comparable girls, for instance, in the above list:

MAYBE the following girls can be compared with each other:
(2) Svitolina
(4) Wozniacki
(5) Halep
(6) Kuznetsova
(7) Kerber
(9) Radwanska

While the following girls should be put into a different group:
(1) Pliskova
(3) Konta
--- Osaka
--- Kvitova
--- Venus
--- Muguruza
--- Mertens
--- Bertens
--- Garcia
--- Mladenovic

and the shortest girls too:
(8) Cibulkova
--- Putintseva
--- Gavrilova
--- CSN
--- Strycova
 
#36 ·
I find it hard to compare the mental strength of players who’ve been on the scene for a year or two vs players who we’ve been watching their ups and downs for 5, 10, or 15+ years.

For example, I’d have given Simona a much lower score 3 years ago but recently she’s really impressed me with her mental toughness.

I need to see how players handle the ups and downs of a career, rebounding from tough losses, etc over a period of time to really assess.




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#38 ·
I find it hard to compare the mental strength of players who’ve been on the scene for a year or two vs players who we’ve been watching their ups and downs for 5, 10, or 15+ years.

For example, I’d have given Simona a much lower score 3 years ago but recently she’s really impressed me with her mental toughness.

I need to see how players handle the ups and downs of a career, rebounding from tough losses, etc over a period of time to really assess.
Yes it fluctuates. To me Simona was at 7 a few years back, went to 8 and now 9. Serena was at 10. She's now more at 9, her nervousness being more visible in the last years, but it's also related to the physical condition.
 
#39 ·
I cant judge Andreescu or Osaka or Barty yet. Its normal to have a down period after a slam and they have years ahead. I think in todays game anyone winning a major before age 25 is doing well. Even if Osaka retires with 3 career titles, she did well to be a multiple slam winner when her game is erratic.
Halep played well in her slam finals and semis, except when it was time to close Ostapenko
Bertens is not the best mentally. Pliskova is consistent, depends how you rate her game
Kerber varies but she was very good in 2016 and her Wimbledon
Serena is the best except for finals, but she faces more pressure than the others because her age
 
#43 ·
Pliskova is mentally tough outside of the majors. But she has proven to be fragile in big moments at the GS. Like we saw against Muchova at Wimbledon. She served for the match twice to make her first Wimbledon QF, with her big serve, and failed to close. She had a good shot at the USO, but tightened up late against Konta, who was her pigeon.

Angie was the toughest player mentally in 2016, and hasn't shown it much since, save for winning Wimbledon. Too many matches at GS and tour-level where she just checks out if the match isn't going her way. She gets all moody and doesn't seem to care. You wouldn't expect to see that from a 3-time GS champion.
 
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