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Know Yourself: A Parent's Guide to the Mental Game
Paperback
Sports GeneralTennisGeneral Parenting
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Apr 2 2026
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A seven-year-old boy is sitting on Court One at Wimbledon, clutching a melting ice cream, watching Novak Djokovic play. He turns to his father and says seven words: I'm going to play here one day.
Seven years later, he did. He represented Great Britain three times. He won the National Grass Court Championships. He played in the Wimbledon Under-14 Invitational and beat the world number one in his age group on Court Four.
Then the confidence collapsed. A damaging coaching period, a losing streak, and the invisible biology of sustained pressure combined to turn a fearless competitor into a child who couldn't remember what winning felt like.
Know Yourself is the book his father wrote to find answers - and the guide he wishes had existed when the dream started to hurt.
Drawing on W. Timothy Gallwey's groundbreaking work on the inner game, John Coates' neuroscience of pressure and the winner effect, the philosophy of Miyamoto Musashi and Marcus Aurelius, and the real stories of champions from Steven Bradbury to Novak Djokovic, Steve Waugh to Lleyton Hewitt, David Goggins to Rafael Nadal, this book gives parents of competitive junior tennis players something no other title provides: a practical, science-backed framework for understanding what is happening to their child - and the tools to help them through it.
At its heart is the KNOW system - four stages for navigating the mental game:
K - Know who you are. The Mirror. N - Name what you hear. The Voice. O - Own what you feel. The Chemistry. W - Work what you control. The Fortress.
Each chapter contains a story, a framework, a guided conversation for parent and child, and a practical tool. The book is designed to be read together - parent and child, side by side - with the child retaining agency throughout.
Written by a former national-level swimmer, University of Chicago graduate, and senior finance professional who spent twenty-five years making high-stakes decisions under extreme pressure, Know Yourself is a performance psychology book disguised as a tennis story. The themes - identity under pressure, the biology of losing streaks, emotional control, the difference between talent and mastery - apply to any young athlete in any sport.
Because the mental game isn't a nice-to-have. It's the whole game.
The journey starts with knowing who you are.
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