PARIS—John Isner, who has reached the third round at the French Open after topping Paolo Lorenzi, says that in the past few weeks he has stopped putting pressure on himself and started to play better.
In the first four months of the season, the world No. 22 didn’t go deep at a single event. But a couple of weeks ago he reached the semifinal in Rome, upending Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic before losing against Alexander Zverev.
“Everyone wants to start the year off well,” Isner said. “And, of course, there's always pressure, but you don't want to try to let it affect you. And then when you start putting the result ahead of the process, you get ahead of yourself and that's not good. I think early on in this year I was just so worried about winning, and just thinking about winning, that I lost focus on a lot of things.
"And that's one of the main reasons I lost a lot of close matches. And now, since I've come over here and started in Rome, I've won a lot of close matches and won a lot of tiebreaks in a row now. So I'm in a pretty good groove there."
It helps that, now, he isn’t worried when he walks on court.
"A lot of times when I'm confident and relaxed on the court, I'm going to be a pretty tough out,” he said. “But when I'm not so confident and not so relaxed, I tense up and my balls fall short and everything. It just sort of unravels.”