"Did you win?" should never be your first question!

I really enjoy getting people started with a tennis racquet. Tennis is one of the great social games, and seeing people laugh and cheer in equal measure in my adult beginners/improvers class is a regular highlight. Take the other week when one of the players couldn't work out whether to hit a forehand or backhand volley as the ball came at them quite quickly, so they headed it back across the net instead. Rather than roars of disapproval everyone collapsed in laughter. They then followed that up with the most outrageous recovery shot to win the next point.

All fun and games.

But then there's the more competitive side of things, and this is where the question makes it's appearance. Not every person who carries a racquet on court wants to play tournaments, but some do. Some work really hard to be the best they can be and go out and play. But tennis is a brutal, unforgiving sport. Only one person can win a match and only one person can win a tournament. So asking "Did you win?" is not the place to start. "How do you play?" is a better question. You can play you're absolute best, but if you're up against the best player in the tournament your'e probably coming home a loser.

To put that in a context let's look at yesterday's Australian Open men's final. Roger Federer won his 20th Grand Slam, more than anyone else in the open era. He's been in 30 finals and played in 72 Grand Slams. His 20 titles make up 10% of the Grand Slams played in the open era.

So, he's converted 2 out of 3 finals into wins. Is that the best record? Well, in 2016 it wasn't. Djokovic  had a better conversion rate. 20 GS wins out of 72 means that he's won fewer than a third of the GS tournaments he's entered! Even arguably the best male tennis player in the open era has had to work incredibly hard to achieve that return. Many tour players go through a whole career without ever getting close to winning a GS let alone a Tour 1000 or 500 event.

The simple truth for anyone who plays an individual sport like tennis or golf is that it is only in exceptional circumstances that you don't go home a loser most times. A professional tennis player was once asked how he coped with losing. His reply was simple, "It happens every week." 128 seat the main draw of a Grand Slam singles tournament. 127 go home losers. That's the brutality of of an individual sport. That's why, "Did you win?" is the wrong first question.