A thought on Roger Federer's win rate - 18.07.25
I heard somewhere once that out of the 1500+ pro matches Federer played in his career, he won about 80% of them.
But if you scale it to individual points, his win rate is only around 54%.
When you have people dedicate their entire lives to things, it's almost inevitable that they converge at similar
levels (I personally think after the 30,000-hour mark, the largest differentiating factor is our genetic
composition). Thus, it becomes extremely hard for one person to dominate the field all the time (hence the 54%).
I also recall Federer mentioning how even the top players winning barely more than half the time enforces (what I
call) an "aim & discard" mindset: every point is critical, but only up until it's over. Once it's in the past, you
HAVE to let go.
When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, "Okay, I double faulted, it's only a point. Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again, it's only a point. Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top 10 plays list — that too, is just a point."
This obviously applies beyond competitive sports. You WILL lose. It's inevitable. People just put in too much
effort for you not to. In fact, best case scenario, you will lose barely less than half the time. The trick is to
absorb the data and move on.
No matter what you do, train this muscle. Train it so hard you barely fetishize your wins. These past points
should be nothing more than a quantitative metric.
TLDR: Winning consistently isn't about avoiding losses, it's just not clinging to them.