It’s May, “I Thought I Was Better Than This?”

You’ve been playing league or tournaments for a few weeks now, and the season is starting to tell the truth about your game. Not the kind of truth you hear in a lesson or practice, but the kind that shows up in a match.  Your legs get tight and heavy, and your go-to patterns of play start breaking down.  It shows in the match score. 

May is the month when players quietly say it to themselves:

“I thought I was better than this.”

Not out loud. Not to anyone else.  Just internally… somewhere between points.  Because by now, you’ve played enough matches to understand that those shots you learned and trusted in February and March aren’t working as well in May.  You realize that your fitness could be better when those rallies get longer.  That strategy you’d been working on in the off-season isn’t as effective as you’d hope.  This is the part players don’t expect. 

Winter and early spring give you space to build ideas about your game.  May forces you to live inside them.  Working on things isn’t an option anymore.  It’s time for a game plan that gets you wins. And if the losses start to pile up, you begin to question if you did enough to raise your level of play.

“Does my backhand hold up when it counts?”

“Does my serve break down on those key points?”

“Can I stay patient in crunch time?”

For a lot of players, the answer might not be what they want to hear.  It’s not failure, it’s clarity.  You see this happen at every level of the sport. The pros experience the same doubts about their games as we recreational players.  It’s more about the surface and style of play, but you see similar results on tour for stretches in places like Madrid and Rome as they build towards the French Open. They’ve had weeks to find rhythm on clay—plenty of matches to work on their patterns. But May doesn’t reward assumptions—it exposes them.

Players who thought their games were solid start to press.

Players who relied on quick points find themselves in long rallies they don’t want to be in.

Players who looked sharp on hard courts suddenly can’t find their “footing.”

And if their game isn’t rounding into shape now, they won’t “find” it again in Paris.

That’s the part most people miss. There’s a belief that on tour, a new tournament brings a reset; a fresh start for a new outcome. But tennis doesn’t work that way. Your game in April/May is what you bring to Paris in June. That applies just as much to the player grinding through league matches on a Saturday morning as it does to the pro stepping onto a stadium court in front of fans.

The month of May might not define your entire season, but it will tell the truth about your game. It’s the month where the gap between who you thought you were and who you actually are becomes clear.

You have to trust the “process” and live with the consequences.  That’s why May matters.