What is emotional intelligence,
and why it matters
By Barry Buss
I've spent fifty years in tennis. Not once have I heard a player storm off the court, toss their bag in the trunk, and blame a loss on poor spacing or a sluggish backswing.
Here's what I hear instead:
None of those reasons have anything to do with a forehand. Every single one is rooted in emotion.
What it is
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize what you're feeling as you feel it, understand what's driving it, and choose your response instead of letting the emotion choose for you.
Know what you're feeling. Understand what caused it. Choose how you respond. Because you can't manage what you can't name.
The idea was made famous by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and longtime science writer for The New York Times, whose 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, became an international bestseller. His work breaks it into four core skills. On a tennis court, they decide almost everything.
Self-awareness
Noticing what you're feeling while it's happening.
Self-management
Resetting that feeling before it costs you a match. A slow breath. Your routine. A clear plan for the next point.
Social awareness
Reading your opponent, your partner, and your Player's Box.
Relationship management
The changeover with your partner. The ride home with your parents. The talk with your coach after a tough loss.
Much of the world figured this out
Schools teach it; they call it social-emotional learning. The largest review of school programs looked at 213 of them and more than 270,000 students. Students who learned these skills came out with better emotional skills, better behavior, and better grades.
Companies hire EQ coaches. Leadership programs train people to handle themselves, and others, under pressure. Healthcare trains empathy and communication.
So where is the program for the competitive tennis player?
Why tennis needs it most
If anyone needs these skills, it's a tennis player. Tennis is emotional by design. Out there, you stand alone. No teammate to pass the ball to. No timeout. No ticking clock to save you. Every match can feel like sudden death.
And when emotions boil over, what does our sport usually do? We don't teach. We punish. John McEnroe, defaulted in Melbourne. Novak Djokovic, defaulted in New York. Daniil Medvedev, defaulted in Beijing this October. Code violations. Fines. Points taken away. Plenty of advice. No training.
For all the years we've spent developing the technical, the physical and the tactical sides of tennis, we've never built a program that explains what this sport does to people, and how to prepare for it.
No one is to blame. The tennis boom created thousands of great players but only a handful of great teachers. Most of us coach as we were coached. So help arrives late, when a player is already hanging by a thread. Burned out. Doubting their path. The joy faded.
We've all acted like that's just part of the deal. Maybe it is. But that doesn't mean we can't change it.
I know this one from the inside
At eighteen, I was an undefeated freshman at UCLA. A year later, I was living in my van.
My forehand was fine. Coaches focused on my tennis IQ. No one ever touched my EQ.
No one should need therapy or rehab when they finish playing a game.
A few years back, I started reading Goleman, and the lines started jumping off the page. I kept thinking: man, what if I'd had this when I was playing?
I'm a little older and a bit battered now. But I can create the program I always needed. For players. For coaches. For parents.
It took me thirty years and a great deal of wreckage to learn what's inside it. You can start at fourteen.
Why it matters
At the top of this sport, everyone can hit the ball. Matches come down to a handful of points, and those points go to the player who stays themselves when it matters. Before you change your game, check your state. So yes, emotional intelligence is performance-enhancing.
But it's more than that. It's life-enhancing. The same skills that carry you through a third-set tiebreak carry you through a tough exam, a hard conversation, a job interview, and a loss that has nothing to do with tennis.
Character is the part of your game that leaves the court with you. You'll cross paths with many important people in your life. They won't care about your UTR at fifteen. They'll care about who you became chasing it. And that includes the most important relationship in your life: the one with yourself.
That's what First Ball To Last is built on: the other half of your game. Personal growth, right alongside competitive greatness.
Competition is the method.
Personal growth is the return.
We spend years teaching players how to use a racket.
It's time we taught them what to do with everything else.
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