The Inner Game of Tennis

Originally written as a tennis coaching text – the wisdom of this approach transcends the world of tennis and carries an important message about how changing our thinking can release the latent potential in us whatever we are doing.

The focus is on the importance of self-talk – what our outer self is telling the inner self and in doing so chimes beautifully with what we know about our unconscious mind. We know that more than 90% of our behaviour is driven by our unconscious and it hears everything we say to ourselves – so consider the impact of critical… show more.

Like Debbie Ford, Gallwey’s work was big in the early years of the century, but his influence has faded a little—which is a real shame. Gallwey rose to fame by through a 60 Minutes clip where he taught a woman to play tennis in under an hour. (It’s amazing to see.) But this book is not about tennis. It’s filled with evergreen and universal insight and tools on how to learn, what to learn, and what gets in the way of you performing at your best. It’s a bit like Zen meets Wimbledon.

This "coaching" book is a quick read, but it's secretly the key to self-confidence and high performance across almost all high-pressure sports and disciplines. I have played tennis exactly zero times in my life, but I've read this book multiple times and continue to recommend it as it teaches you how to let go and perform at your best no matter what court or stage you're standing on.