How Tiny Margins Can Make or Break You
- Jul 16
- 3 min read
Written by Alex Manos, Elite Athlete Life Coach
Alex Manos is a Coach for Elite Athletes and Professional sportspeople. He is the founder of Athlete Life Coaching, which is a bespoke coaching business that focuses on coaching the human behind the athlete to maximize performance in their sport and life.
There are 25.4 mm in an inch, and a tennis ball can be out by 1 mm. At the very maximum, if you lose a match by 25 points, which is not normally the case at the professional level, each miss of just 1 mm could cost you money, ranking points, entry into bigger tournaments, and sponsorships. It can also, of course, be in by 1 mm, and all of the above becomes the opposite.
Tennis is the only sport where you can win fewer points overall and still win a match because of its scoring system. It does not happen often, but sometimes the difference can be three to five points in a three-set match or five to ten points in a five-set match. Those margins can be millimetres.
You can come off the court thinking you were unlucky and that you “just missed out.” A few net cords here and there, some shots out by a few millimetres, a couple of mishits from your opponent, or a gust of wind. But let’s be honest. That is not the full story.
It is the story you tell yourself to soothe the loss and externalise the performance. It shifts the focus away from what you could have done more of and less of. If you have people around you who pander to that, it feels even more comforting.
An athlete with an elite, champion mindset does not do that. They internalise. They look inward. They reflect on themselves. That can be uncomfortable, and that is okay.
When we talk about small margins, which can be the difference between winning and losing, what we are actually talking about is the small margins off the court that you either are or are not noticing. Small margins are everywhere and can either be left alone or worked on.
Are you on time for every session? Do you do that extra rep in the gym? Do you skip the visualisation exercise because things are going well? Do you choose to have fries on the side? Do you choose to stay up late? Is your breathwork locked in as a daily practice?
Small margins. Big gains or losses. The margins on a tennis court can reflect your life off it. Are you choosing to pay attention to all the margins, or are you leaving them to chance?
Train the margins, and they may well look after you better the next time you try to rip a forehand down the line.
Read more from Alex Manos
Alex Manos, Elite Athlete Life Coach
Alex Manos is changing the landscape for how coaching and mental training can benefit Elite Athletes. Having spent 25 years as a physiotherapist, half of which was working in professional sport, he turned his career to coaching several years ago. Passionate about developing athletes as humans first, his work focuses on self-discovery and realization of how their life outside of their sporting arena is a reflection of life in it. Put simply, his coaching philosophy is "Where the athlete meets the human".
