In tennis, No-man’s land is not the place you want to be. The space between the baseline and volley line, it’s where you’re likely to be chastised for standing (“Gupta, get OUT of no-man’s land!”) and where you’ll hit the least shots.

The problem with no-man’s land is that you reach too far to hit long balls and too far to hit short balls. The middle is not an advantageous position as you flail and stretch for balls that soar past you or one’s that are just shy of your grasp. You’re breathless and mixed-up in no-man’s land.

The name itself sounds lonely and desperate, like a desert where you go to die.

When I played tennis I didn’t understand this concept. I thought the middle was the nicest, most effective place to be. Shouldn’t it make it easier to hit both long and short balls from the center? A natural hitter, I thought that positioning myself in the prime real estate nobody else wanted was an advantage.

At my coach’s behest, I consciously tried to avoid no-man’s land, but gravitated toward it in high school. It felt like the smart place to be to prepare for whatever came in.

My tennis started to suck. Royally. I flailed around and ran speedily back to reach long balls and as fast as I could back to reach short balls. I looked like a chicken with my head cut off and the courts filled with little kids waiting to kick my ass. I started to see that my techniques weren’t working and that perhaps heeding the advice that seemed counterintuitive to me would improve my game. I cautiously approached either the baseline or the volley line and avoided no-man’s land at all costs.

A creature of rationalization, I saw that I loved no-man’s land not because it mentally prepared to hit better, but because it didn’t force me to make a decision. The middle was safe place to be, and I didn’t have to choose my positioning based on what came in. I just hit whatever came in.

Tennis is a split-second sport. Michael Chang is intense and his feet move fast. He anticipates and makes a decision even before his opponent serves up a ball. Thus, he wins. My indecision in no-man’s land weakened everything about my game. I saw that I was scared of making a wrong decision and failing, and knew that the middle didn’t give me nearly as much anxiety as hitting from the baseline or the volley line. It was there where I could miss a shot if I chose wrong.

Being pro-active improved my game, but I also realized that failing was inevitable at times. I chose wrong at times and missed shots. But at least I was choosing. Staying in no-man’s land was a constant failure, and the alternative of making a decision but chancing a wrong move felt much better to me.

Sometimes the things that seem most natural or smart or intuitive for us to do are really just rationalizations because we’re scared of the alternatives. I saw this clearly with my tennis game and I see it in other aspects of my life as well. Nothing left to do but anticipate, prepare, and make the decisions that are the hardest to make, Chang-style.