Are We Wired to Change Our Tennis? Finding the Balance Between Optimization and Contentment

If we look up records of tennis from way back when, we will see a drastically different game than what tennis is now. In fact, historians believe that tennis was originally played with just the palm of the hand, which eventually became protected with a glove, and by the 16th century, the glove had become a racquet. The rules of tennis have gone through countless changes and evolutions, and every generation of tennis thinks they have figured it out– the best way to hit a forehand, the optimal strategy, and even the rules themselves.

You may think I’m leading into a simple discussion of “when does tennis stop being tennis”? If tennis was originally hit with the palm of hand, could we not call Pickleball the next evolution of tennis? This is a discussion for another journal post, but today we are discussing a bigger question: are humans naturally wired to be content, or are we driven to constantly optimize? To understand that, let’s step outside of tennis and look at humans themselves.

The Anthropology of “Good Enough”

Let’s rewind to when we had to hunt for food, pick berries, and work as a tribe to survive. Rewind how far back? Depending on whose calendar you’re using, humans were primarily hunter-gatherers for roughly 250,000 years, and perhaps even up to 2 million years if we’re including our earliest human ancestors. There was definitely no tennis, but who’s to say the kids didn’t have any rocks or dirt balls to throw back and forth to each other?

The point is: for most of human history, change moved at a glacial pace. The hunting and gathering method worked. Agricultural techniques remained static for centuries. Tools and technologies evolved over hundreds and thousands of years, not decades. Contentment and stability had survival value. In other words, don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Eventually– far later than our brains can probably comprehend—the Industrial Revolution and good old capitalism became maybe the original hunt for that dopamine fix to be more efficient, more profitable, more productive, more hungry for improvements.

But resistance to change was still the societal norm. How many times have we read in history books that people were resistant to the ideas of printed news? An energy source that could power machines, heat, light, and motion? It sounded preposterous at the time.

Humans might actually be predisposed for “good enough” rather than “optimal.” Or maybe we are just an extremely judgmental group of beings. How many times have we rolled our eyes at another article written by AI, aka the new technology that is currently encompassing our world?

What I actually think is happening though is that humans have both the drive for stability and the drive to improve. For the majority of history, stability and contentment was the forerunner, as change happened slowly and only when it was really necessary. Today, modern capitalism and technology prioritizes optimization and improvement. If you’re content with the way things used to be and always commenting on how things used to be better, or how you used to do it back in your day… well, “Ok boomer.”

Tennis as a Microcosm of Human Evolution

With that broader human tendency in mind, we can see the same pattern play out in tennis. Let’s return to tennis as a microcosm of human evolution. In the beginning, the continental grip dominated for decades. You could serve, volley, hit forehands and backhands, all with one grip. For 10-year-old me, that was the ideal way to play, as I had no idea how to change grips in the middle of a tennis point.

In the span of 50 years, there was a slow shift to eastern grip and semi-western grip. But how did we even know the change was necessary? People were still winning majors with continental grips. If he could, John McEnroe would make the top players in the world currently hold continental and while they’re at it, serve and volley a 100mph return back. But he has never played professional tennis in modern conditions. The conditions, equipment, and baseline speed of today’s game are so different then what he has ever experienced on a professional level.

The change wasn’t obviously necessary. The shift away from the continental grip wasn’t forced by failure. Instead, people just couldn’t stop tinkering.

The Acceleration Problem

Now we see that changes are happening quicker than ever in tennis. Racquet technology has evolved in the span of 40 years, string technology is constantly evolving, and with the use of technology, we can see what biomechanics will create the optimal technique for more power, spin, drive, kick, and more. In other words, improvement is engineered.

Are we approaching physical limits of human capability? At what point does the game become unrecognizable? When will we be utilizing our own “special shots” and doing Mario Tennis style acrobatics mid-point? If we can keep optimizing serve speeds, court coverage, reaction times—who’s to say how the future of tennis will look?

Even the structure of the game itself is being optimized for speed and spectacle. The new “Fast4” format that some junior tournaments implement is a great example: a set is first to four games, no-ad scoring, and a tiebreak at 3-3. This has even happened in the ATP Next Gen Finals, a fast-paced tournament for the top eight players aged 21 and under. But is a four-game set still tennis? When does the optimization actually erase the essence of the game itself? Or is this actually progress?

The Case for Evolution

Despite all the changes, good and bad, that tennis has gone through, I think the modern game is objectively more impressive in many ways.

Today’s players are better athletes than any generation before them. They’re faster, stronger, more explosive. Djokovic at 37 is in better shape than most 25-year-olds were in McEnroe’s era. Alcaraz chasing down a drop shot, sliding into a defensive position, and somehow flipping a winner cross-court, was something that was not physically possible 100 years ago.

The rallies are longer, the shot-making is more creative, the athleticism is breathtaking. And it’s not just the pros who benefit. Modern equipment has made tennis more accessible for everyone. Lighter racquets with bigger sweet spots mean beginners can actually hit the ball. Polyester strings let club players swing hard without launching balls into the next court.

Maybe all the shifts tennis has gone through have actually made tennis better, dynamic, exciting, and most importantly, fun.

The Optimization Paradox

If we do continue to always look to constantly optimize, what does that mean for tennis? Professionally, culturally, and stylistically? Does constant optimization actually promise better tennis?

One example we can look at is the modern forehand. Players are faster and fitter than ever before, hitting 100mph+ forehands. However, the biomechanically “optimal” forehand, with its wrist lag, hip rotation, and coil, can lead to higher injury rates due to lack of proper instruction and training.

But in a time of constantly changing styles, there are definitely players who didn’t change and had success. Federer’s one-handed backhand in a two-handed world comes to mind. He was more than content with his style. His success suggests optimization isn’t always necessarily about changing, but instead refining what already works. Masters in tennis, or in any field, might reframe the question from “should we optimize?” to “what should we optimize, and what should we leave alone?”

Finding Balance

So what does all this mean for you, the club player?

The truth is, humans probably are biologically wired for both contentment and improvement as we wouldn’t have survived without either one. For most of history, the majority of people’s instinct was to be content, while innovation and optimization were the outliers. But in this day and age where we can order food straight to our doorstep in the span of thirty minutes, we’ve been culturally conditioned to always want more, faster, better. The age of smart phones, technology, and social media is a constant exposure to look for the newer, more unique, more optimal way of doing things.

I’m sure you scroll and scroll through reels and videos of coaches telling you “Every club player does this swing wrong!” or “Five things you need to fix immediately.” It’s not even their fault though. How else can they make you watch their video?

When you don’t know what to fix, everything feels like it might be wrong. So instead of building confidence in what works, you start dismantling your game piece by piece. Improvement stops coming from repetition and starts coming from constant self-correction. And a player who is always correcting is rarely playing freely.

This collective obsession with optimization might actually be making us worse off. This mindset isn’t unique to sports. It shows up everywhere.

A very toxic ex once told me when talking about themselves, “I can never be satisfied with how I look”—implying that if they ever were happy with how they look, they’d become overweight. I’m not a therapist, but I can definitively say that is an unhealthy relationship with self-improvement.

The same logic applies to your tennis game. So if you’re never satisfied, if you’re always chasing the next technical adjustment, the next grip change, the next biomechanical optimization, then when do you actually just play tennis? When do you get to enjoy the game you already have?

Only you can answer that question for yourself.

Maybe you should step outside your comfort zone, take some tennis lessons, and seriously change something in your game. Or maybe you need to recognize what already works perfectly for you. A good coach could help you figure out the difference or maybe you just need enough self-awareness to answer the question honestly.

Tennis will keep evolving. In 100 years it might look absurd to us, just like 1920s tennis looks quaint now. But you have a choice. The instinct to improve isn’t inherently good or bad; after all, the drive to experiment and innovate is what makes us human. I believe the real question might be: do we know the difference between what actually needs improving and what’s already working just fine?