An Experimental Attempt of a Numerical Assessment of Mental Performance in Tennis: Egograms

Mental skills play a crucial role in sports performance, distinguishing between winning and losing. Paradoxically, almost all high-level tennis athletes say convincingly that the mental aspect is the most critical aspect of the game, and then seeing that it is trained either not at all or very little, certainly less than the physical and technical-tactical aspect. Although there is a growing interest in mental training in professional sports, there are few methods of assessing mental performance, mainly questionnaires and rating scales. Our study, centered on tennis and easily extendable to other sports, attempts to give as objective an answer as possible through numerical evaluation to this contradiction, albeit with the understanding that a completely objective assessment is impossible in assessing mental abilities. Using the basic three IO scheme of E. BERNE’s Transactional Analysis, it was possible to trace a numerical evaluation of five parameters of mental energy distribution and, thus, cognitive performance while being aware of the limitations and approximations of this system. The assessment is done by observing the athlete’s on-court behavior and the fundamental support of a mobile app called EGOGRAMS. These five numbers, represented in a columnar graph, represent the athlete’s mental performance (Egogram), and when correlated with the positive (victory) or negative (defeat) outcome of the game, allow for the player’s winning Egogram.