Jim Loehr’s Lasting Lessons for Tennis Coaches

When Loehr began working in tennis, sport psychology was not a standard part of player development. “There was a stigma associated with the idea of working with a psychologist,” says Jack Groppel, PhD, Loehr’s longtime friend and business partner. “There was an assumption that there must be something wrong. It wasn’t about mental toughness and helping you perform.”

 

Walker Sahag, who worked as a researcher and presenter for Loehr, remembers the same climate. “When I grew up, and I know when Jim grew up, it was believed that you either had it or you didn’t,” Sahag says. “You were either a mentally tough competitor or you were not.”

 

Loehr helped change that. Sahag explains his influence plainly: “An entire industry really stood on his shoulders.”

What separated Loehr, Groppel says, was that he was not selling vague inspiration. He was studying performance. “Jim Loehr was not just a psychologist,” Groppel says. “He was an absolute scientist who understood, who wanted to understand, the physiological measuring ramifications of psychological manifestations. At one point, he was measuring the amount of cortisol in the sweat of tennis players so he could better understand what these young athletes were feeling.”

 

Sahag says that scientific base made his work last. “The principles and the science behind his work were verified and correct, so it’s held up over time,” she says.

 

That mattered to coaches because Loehr’s work could be translated into teachable behaviors. He studied breathing, posture, heart rate, focus, rituals and recovery. He looked at what the best players did when they were not hitting the ball.

 

Loehr’s best-known tennis contribution, the 16-second cure, came from a simple observation: most of a tennis match happens between points. Groppel calls it “one of the most significant contributions to sport in the 20th century.”

 

“According to the data,” Groppel explains, “when you play a tennis match, you’re only hitting balls 35 percent of the time. Being the creative person that he was, Jim asked the question, ‘What’s going on in the brain of every player during the 65 percent of the time they’re not playing points?’”

 

Loehr identified four phases successful players used between points: a positive physical response, relaxation, mental preparation and ritual. Instead of allowing a missed volley or poor decision to hijack the next point, players could learn to reset.

 

Groppel explains: “Jim understood that when you make a mistake, if you’ve got a negative image, it’s almost impossible to clear that in 20 seconds. But if you have a strategy, such as imaging the correction, you clear the computer and put a positive response in your mind. That’s phase one.”

 

The second phase is to relax, practicing what Loehr called “the walk of the confident fighter,” taking two deep, diaphragmatic breaths, taking more air into your lungs instead of slumping over. Third is mental preparation. Visualize and think about what you’re going to do in the next moments with your serve or return. The fourth phase is using rituals to signal to yourself that it’s time to perform – bounce the ball a certain number of times, tap the racket and so on. “Jim found out you could do all this in just 16 seconds,” Groppel explains, “and following his discovery, this was studied emphatically across every sport.”

 

For today’s coaches, the lesson is clear: between-point behavior should be coached with the same intentionality as footwork or swing shape.

Sahag said Loehr changed how she understood coaching. “Before, I thought all problems were solved with either technique or with tactics,” she says. “Now I had an avenue to truly help players perform at their highest levels.”

 

That shift is still relevant at every level of the game. Players miss not only because their mechanics break down. Sometimes their mechanics break down because their focus, breathing, emotional control or self-talk breaks down first.

 

Sahag says Loehr’s work helped her become “much more of a rounded coach” by blending technique, tactics and mental toughness.

Later in life, Loehr placed increasing emphasis on character. His belief was that character could be trained like a muscle, through intentional energy investment. 

 

Groppel says that was not separate from tennis. It was central to it. “It’s because of your character that you’ll either throw the racket and be angry or you’ll be able to stay calm and do what you need to do,” he says.

 

Loehr’s work on energy also pushed coaches to think beyond intensity. Groppel said Loehr wanted people to use the words “energy” and “character,” but to understand that he meant positive energy.

 

“For anyone who wants to role model Jim Loehr in their own life,” Groppel says, “be sure to live your life with high-positive energy, generosity and high-quality character.”

When asked how a coach can honor Loehr’s legacy, Groppel says, “As part of your lesson structure, not only should you teach your players the proper behaviors in-between points and on the changeovers, but also how to live their lives off the court.”

 

That may be Loehr’s most enduring gift to tennis. He made the invisible parts of performance visible. He showed coaches that confidence, recovery, focus and character are not fixed traits. They are habits, they are skills and they can be trained.

 

For every coach helping a player recover after a miss, breathe before a return, reset after frustration or compete with better energy, Loehr’s work is still alive on the court.