Sports have become a match-ups and numbers game. Every game or match is all about who you are playing, how you have performed against them in the past, and how you will adjust to defeat them. Well Irina Falconi, a top ranked tennis player and now writer, isn’t interested in any of that.
Falconi has brought a new approach to her world of tennis in which she doesn’t want to know the name of her opponent until she is playing her match! This strategy at first glance is one that is hard to understand. Wouldn’t you want to know as much as you can about your opponent? What are their weaknesses? What will give you the upper leg in the match so that you can ultimately come out victorious? Could you imagine a professional basketball or football team preparing to play a game and not learning about their opponents? Most people spend hours watching film to learn the finest details about their opponents but Falconi’s strategy displays a level of confidence in her game that says, “My best match can beat your best match.” She is playing to win just like anyone else, but she is going out there playing her game, not yours. Therefore it doesn’t matter who she is playing, because at the end of the day, all she can really control is her play, so isn’t that really all she should focus on?
She has incorporated this strategy into her pre-match ritual and so far for Falconi, it has been working.
This year has been her best year in the grand slam tournaments, where it matters most. She has made it past the first round in every major except for Wimbledon, including reaching the third round at the French Open. Her ranking has risen to 73rd in the world and should continue to rise if she can play well at this years U.S Open, which she has done so far.
She defeated her fellow American Samantha Crawford in straight sets 6-4, 6-2 in the first round of the Open and will look to continue that success later this week.
Falconi does have a tough task ahead of her in the second round in tennis legend, Venus Williams; but I bet if you were to ask Falconi, she could care less who it was. She knows she can play with anybody and is out to prove that yet again.
And if winning on the court hasn’t been enough, she has now decided to take her talents to the world of journalism. For this year’s Open, she is writing a blog for ESPNW.com where she is detailing what her day looks like and what goes on in her head throughout the process. We can only hope that she will share what exactly she is thinking about for her upcoming match with Venus, and whether she has been made aware yet of it at all yet? But regardless of who it is, we can be sure Falconi will be ready to play her best tennis and take us all along the ride with her.
