There are moments in sport that manage to say more than a trophy ever could. Carlos Alcaraz’s victory in this year’s Roland Garros final was one of them. After nearly five and a half hours, down two sets to none, facing three consecutive championship points, he didn’t just survive. He found another level. And at the end of it all, with a grin that carried both relief and certainty, he said something quietly powerful: “I never doubted myself.”
It’s easy to look at that moment and think it’s about greatness. But for me, it’s about something much more relatable. It’s about belief. And how rare it is that we treat belief as a skill to be developed, rather than an outcome of success.
As coaches, as parents, as part of a system that constantly measures performance, we spend so much time obsessing over technique and tactics. We refine mechanics, adjust grips, analyze match footage, tweak training loads. But belief? That often gets left to chance. We assume confidence will appear once the results come. We think resilience is something you’re either born with or stumble into after a tough loss. We rarely treat it as something we can help players build deliberately, over time.
But here’s what Alcaraz reminded us: belief isn’t something you summon in the fifth set. It’s something you’ve rehearsed quietly, through dozens of moments when no one was watching. It’s the result of being stretched again and again, and slowly learning that you don’t break. It’s a habit, not a miracle.
He said that in the past, he did doubt himself. He didn’t always believe he had the strength to fight back. But he learned. And the question that sits with me is: how did he learn? What environments made that growth possible? Who created the space for him to fail, reflect, and come back stronger? Who let him sit with discomfort instead of rushing in to fix it?
I wonder how often our players get those kinds of moments. Not just the tough matches, but the emotional permission to struggle without being judged. The opportunity to feel pressure and come up short, then talk about it, think about it, and go again. That’s how belief is built. Not through correction or control, but through trust.
In junior tennis, we often celebrate the winners, the cleanest strokes, the smoothest performances, the kids who look like they already have it all figured out. But what if we started celebrating belief instead? What if we praised the ones who lost a set but stayed engaged? The ones who double faulted at a key moment, but still played the next point with courage? The ones who kept showing up when no one thought they could turn it around?
This sport has a way of revealing who we are under pressure. Alcaraz showed us that belief isn’t about having the answers, it’s about staying connected to the possibility of growth. That’s what we should be nurturing in our young players.
Because in the end, we’re not just coaching backhands. We’re helping build the kind of people who don’t crumble when things get hard. And that, more than any title or ranking, is what truly lasts.
