Alley-oops Syndrome

This is the prototypical example of a purely psychological syndrome. The cause is mental, the diagnosis is mental, and the solution is mental. The whole darn thing is mental.

It begins with the wrong opponent - a retriever. Retrievers run down all of your winners and shovel them back into your court. Over and over, everything comes back. They play no-error tennis, but differ from human backboards in that backboards can still be beaten by winners if you can hit one in time. Retrievers eat your winners and spit them back in your face. Subconsciously this sets off a feedback loop that goes something like this: Everything I hit comes back. Every shot I hit has a lower chance of success than my opponent's shots. Therefore my opponent will win the majority of points. Of course, since most people rate and discount retrievers, giving them no respect, this also sets off a shame spiral to the tune of; " this person should not beat me! How dare they return all of my winners!" Energized by the emotions that accompany this shame spiral, the cognitive dissonance set up by the feedback loop that portrays the opponent as invulnerable to attack. Motivated by the priority to avoid a shameful defeat, the mind comes up with a simple, if irrational, plan.

Instead of hitting the ball into play and risk the opponent returning it, just hit the ball into the alley! From that position, there will be no return. Problem solved! The result of this machination is a peculiarly high number of shots placed square in the middle of the alley, to the point that one says to oneself " I couldn't hit the alleys so consistently if I were trying to do it!" That is the big hint. Other than blaming some supernatural entity, the only rational explanation for all of these alley balls is that you are doing it purposefully, albeit not consciously.

If you find this kind of self-destructive, neurotic behavior inconceivable then you have never really encountered neurotic behavior. It always seems contradictory to reason and self-interest, but if you look a little deeper, you always find some way in which the behavior is protective of a distressed part of the neurotic's mind, usually the ego. When I have described this behavior to retrievers, I usually encounter deep skepticism, but they always come back to me weeks or months later reporting that they have witnessed this phenomenon in their opponents. Once you start recognizing this and other neurotic behaviors in your opponents, you become less likely to fall prey to them yourself and better able to exploit them in others.

The Quick Fix

The way you deal with any cognitive dissonance is to expose the fallacies that undergird them. In this case, the fantasy is that retrievers are unbeatable. Granted, they have got game and rating them or rating anyone is never a good idea. But even the fastest human can't run down everything. You can pass them; from the net, from the service line, with an overhead, or with a well placed shot to hit when they are out of position. Retrievers are particularly susceptible to groundstrokes hit behind them - using their speed against them. Like the rest of us, they are vulnerable to angle shots hit from the net. They are not generally known for their passing shots as long as you can manage to keep them behind their baseline. If you encounter a retriever who can pass you from anywhere on the court, you are playing Raphael Nadal.