Sponsored by
The Throw That Breaks Is the Easy One, and Half of Them Happen Inside 20 Meters
The Warm up
Coco Gauff Won a Title This Week and Still Leads Her Tour in Double Faults
On Sunday, Coco Gauff beat Jessica Pegula 6-2, 6-4 to win the Cincinnati Open, her first title of the season.
Now rewind exactly one year. At the same tournament in 2025, Gauff served 16 double faults and made 62 unforced errors in a quarterfinal loss, hired a biomechanist the week before the US Open, and cried on court during a second-round match in New York. Her serve had stopped answering the phone.
Here is the part that matters more than the trophy. She is not cured. Gauff still leads the WTA this season with 299 double faults, 7.80% of her service points against a tour average of 5.16%. She hit six in the Cincinnati quarterfinal she won.
That is a far better story to tell a 12-year-old than "she fixed it."
Also on the calendar this week:
US Open. The main draw begins Sunday on ESPN and ABC. World No. 1 Jannik Sinner withdrew while recovering from injury, handing the top seed to Alexander Zverev, and Carlos Alcaraz returns from four months out with a wrist injury to defend his title, something no man has managed in New York since 2008. Fan Week is free through Saturday.
Little League World Series. The US and international finals are Saturday at 12:30 and 3:30pm ET, and the World Championship is Sunday at 3pm ET on ABC.
College football starts tonight, with FCS and HBCU openers at 6pm ET and North Carolina against TCU from Dublin at noon Saturday.
Soccer. The Champions League draw is at noon ET today, and Premier League Matchweek 2 runs Friday through Monday.
NFL. Final preseason week, then more than 500 players get released when rosters cut to 53 on Sunday.
Every one of those athletes has a skill that could betray them this week, and the ones most likely to break are not the hard skills. They are the easy ones.
The Lead Off
The Yips Is a Control Problem, Not a Courage Problem
THE SCIENCE: Start with the finding that should reset how you think about this. When researchers in the Dutch Yips Study surveyed 234 club golfers, they measured competition tension in golfers with the yips and golfers without them. The scores were 6.0 and 5.6. Statistically indistinguishable.
The thing that looks like the ultimate nerves problem is not primarily a nerves problem. Which means "you just have to relax out there" is aimed at the wrong target.
Here is what appears to actually be happening. Under pressure, an athlete takes a skill that had been running as one smooth automatic chunk and starts consciously steering the individual parts of it. The critical detail for parents: you do not have to be anxious for it to happen. Paying attention to your own technique is enough.
The proof still surprises people. Experienced golfers putted more accurately while distracted by a second task than when told to pay attention to their own stroke. Skilled soccer players dribbled fastest while distracted and slowest while thinking about their feet. And the pattern flipped for their non-dominant foot, where the skill was not yet automatic.
That flip is the whole coaching lesson in one result. For a brand-new skill, thinking about mechanics is exactly right. For a skill your kid already owns, thinking about mechanics is sabotage.
It is also far more common than the silence suggests. In a 2025 study of 285 youth baseball players, 10.2% reported the yips, most often among pitchers, with stigma repeatedly named as the reason nobody hears about it. Roughly one kid on your child's roster is dealing with this and hiding it.
Now the most useful thing in this issue. In Japanese research on throwing yips, 50% of episodes happened on throws of 20 meters or less, only 8.1% happened beyond 50 meters, and symptoms were worse at light effort than at full effort. In the youth study, 75% of affected players struggled specifically with gentle, short throws.
Your kid can fire a strike from the fence and then bounce a soft toss to first base. That is not a confidence issue and it is not laziness. It is the signature. And it makes brutal sense once you know the mechanism: a full-effort throw is too fast to steer, and a soft one leaves just enough time to start steering.
TRANSLATE IT TO YOUR SPORT: The skill that breaks is almost never the hard one. Look for the version with the most time and the least urgency in it.
Baseball and softball: The flip to first and the throw back to the mound, not the throw from deep in the hole.
Tennis: The second serve, not the first.
Soccer: The six-yard tap-in and the short back pass, not the 30-yard strike.
Hockey: The wide-open net and the soft pass to the point, not the slap shot.
Basketball: The free throw and the uncontested layup, not the pull-up three.
Golf: The three-foot putt, not the drive. This is where the yips research started.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR ATHLETE: If a skill your child owns suddenly stops working, especially the short and soft version of it, treat it as a control problem, not a courage problem. Stop the technique talk, put the phone down, and give them one thing to aim at. One honest caveat: the treatment research here is thin, so anyone selling a guaranteed cure is ahead of the science.
The Fuel Station
The Long Match Bowl
Tennis matches sprawl. So do baseball tournaments, and so does a Saturday that starts with a 7am departure. This bowl is built to be eaten two to three hours before a long day and still be working in hour four. It also runs cold out of a cooler, which matters in late August.
THE PLAYERS: (serves 4)
2 cups jasmine or long-grain white rice, uncooked
1.5 lb boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
3 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tbsp neutral oil
1 cup shelled edamame, thawed
1 large cucumber, diced
2 cups shredded carrot
3 green onions, sliced
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
Salt to taste
THE BUILD:
Start the rice. White rice, not brown, on purpose. You want it to digest easily and hand over its energy without sitting in the stomach.
Whisk the soy sauce, honey, vinegar, garlic and ginger in a small bowl.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Add the chicken in a single layer, leave it alone for 4 minutes, then stir and cook 4 to 5 minutes more until browned through.
Pour in the sauce. It will bubble and thicken in about 2 minutes. Pull it off the heat.
Build bowls: rice, chicken and sauce, then edamame, cucumber, carrot, green onion and sesame seeds. Salt the cucumber lightly.
For a cooler, pack the rice and chicken together and the vegetables separately so nothing wilts.
THE GOAL: Serve 2 to 3 hours before a match, a tournament block, or a long practice. If first serve is at 8am, this becomes the night-before dinner and a smaller version rides along in the cooler.
WHY IT WORKS:
White rice and honey give fast, easy carbohydrate. Easy digestion matters more than fiber on a competition morning.
Chicken thighs bring complete protein with enough fat to keep them satisfied through a long window, without the heaviness of a red-meat meal.
Cucumber, carrot and edamame carry water and potassium. In young men tested at only 1.59% body-mass loss, mild dehydration significantly increased tension and anxiety and slowed working memory. Nobody is claiming dehydration causes the yips, but if you are trying to keep a nervous system calm, showing up half a liter down is a self-inflicted wound.
The light salt is deliberate. Salted food drives voluntary drinking, and the cucumber gives it somewhere to go.
The Lab
Three Drills That Never Mention the Body Part
THE PLAY: Rebuild a broken skill without ever naming the arm, the wrist, or the elbow. All three drills are new this week and all three work in a driveway. Two rules run underneath them: name the target, never the body part, because pointing attention outward rather than at the body reliably improves execution in experienced athletes, and make missing nearly impossible, then shrink the margin, because errorless learning of overhand throwing in children produced better accuracy that held up even while they counted backwards.
DRILL 1: The Shrinking Target
Setup. Chalk a box on the driveway or tape a rectangle on the garage door. Start absurdly big. A serve target should be roughly a car door. A throwing target should be about a pizza box.
The drill. Ten reps. Your only words are the target: "hit the chalk," "top of the tape." Not one word about the elbow or the follow-through. At 8 of 10, shrink the target by a third and run ten more.
Progression. Once the target is genuinely small, keep the size and add distance instead. If accuracy falls below 6 of 10, it shrank too fast. Make it bigger again without commentary.
Why it works. It makes your job impossible to get wrong, because there is only one thing you are allowed to say.
DRILL 2: The Soft-Toss Ladder
Setup. A bucket, a laundry basket, or a taped square at chest height. Start at 10 feet. Yes, 10.
The drill. Ten deliberately gentle throws from 10 feet. Not medium effort. Genuinely soft. Then 15 feet, then 20, then 25. You only move back after 8 of 10 land.
Progression. Once 25 feet is easy, do not keep backing up. Go back to 10 feet and add a receiver who moves, or a glove flip, or a rolled ball to field first. You are expanding the situations, not the distance.
Why it works. It walks straight at the exact profile where the yips lives, short distance and light effort, instead of avoiding it.
DRILL 3: The Squeeze and Serve
Setup. Anywhere they serve, shoot, or throw. You need one spare ball.
The drill. Build a fixed four-step routine and never vary it. Two bounces. Squeeze a ball firmly in the non-dominant hand for about 10 seconds. Fix the eyes on one single spot on the target. Go. Same order every rep, including in the backyard, so the routine is what shows up in the game.
Progression. After a week of clean reps, add tiny pressure. Announce a fake score out loud, watch, and have them run the full routine and execute. Stakes stay trivial. Who unloads the dishwasher, never who earns dessert.
Why it works. Pre-performance routines are one of the better-supported ideas in this field, with a benefit that holds up under pressure and takes about ten minutes to learn. The non-dominant-hand squeeze is the strange one: among junior tennis players under real pressure, it held accuracy steady while squeezing with the dominant hand made things about 27% worse. That is a small finding, so try it because it costs nothing, not because it is settled.
TRANSLATE IT TO YOUR SPORT: Shrink the target, start where missing is nearly impossible, then rebuild the situation instead of the distance.
Soccer: Passes into a cone gate you slowly narrow, from six yards, then add a moving receiver rather than more distance.
Hockey: Shots at a chalked corner of the garage door, then the same corner off a pass.
Basketball: Free throws with one fixed routine and a spot on the rim as the only thing you name out loud.
Volleyball: Serves into a taped quadrant, dropping to a smaller zone only after eight of ten land.
Made In Cookware® - The Cookware Chefs Actually Use
Plenty of cookware brands will pay a famous chef to hold a pan and smile. Made In doesn't do that. Their cookware is used in 4,000+ professional kitchens and has been adopted by millions of home cooks.
Now you can cook with the exact pieces from your favorite restaurant at home. Every piece of cookware is built by craftsmen in the USA and Europe, using performance materials and construction that hold up to the rigors of the world’s most demanding kitchens. There’s a reason why it’s the cookware with the most 5-star reviews on the internet.
Most people who need a full kitchen replacement start with their Cookware Sets, where you’ll find their best deals. Pasta lovers need the 3 QT Saucier, the piece chefs call their most-reached-for pan and is the pan that powers world-famous Italian joints like Mother Wolf in L.A.
Parent Playbook
Telling Them What Not to Do Makes Them Do It
THE STRATEGY: There is one sentence in this issue that will change more outcomes than everything else combined, so here it is on its own line.
Telling a young athlete what not to do makes them do it.
Not as a figure of speech. As a measured result. Researchers had 32 experienced tennis players serve under low pressure and then under real pressure, with a prize, an audience, and new US Open balls. Under that pressure, players hit significantly more serves into the exact zone they had been told to avoid, while serves into the intended target zone did not improve. The negative instruction added errors without adding a single point of accuracy.
"Don't double fault." "Don't throw it away." "Don't be nervous." Every one of those is an instruction to do the thing.
Stack that on the mechanism from The Lead Off and you get an uncomfortable conclusion. During execution, your technique reminder is processed much the same way anxiety is. Shouting "keep your elbow up" from the fence is not neutral, and it is not help. It is the same input.
THE PLAY: For one week, follow a single rule at every practice and every game. Before or during any rep, the only thing you are allowed to say out loud is where the ball should go.
Build the swap in advance so you are not improvising under stress:
Instead of
“Don’t doubt fault”
“Don’t throw it away”
“Don’t miss the net”
“Keep your elbow up”
“Relax, you’re fine”
Say
“Big box, deep corner”
“Chest-high on the mitt”
“Top of the tape”
Nothing. Say it in the driveway Tuesday, not the court on Saturday
“Pick your spot”
Save every mechanical thought for practice, on skills that are still being built. Once a skill is theirs, your job in the moment is to hand them a target and then be quiet.
THE CONVERSATION STARTER: "What's your routine before you serve? Show me all of it."
TRANSLATE IT TO YOUR SPORT: Every one of these replaces a warning with a place to aim.
Baseball and softball: "Glove side, chest high," not "don't air-mail it."
Soccer: "Far post," not "don't miss."
Hockey: "Top corner, glove side," not "don't fan on it."
Basketball: "Back of the rim," not "don't be short."
🏆 Play of the Week
Watch the Twelve Seconds After a Mistake
THE PLAY: Sunday is a double bill and both halves are on ABC. At 3pm ET, twenty of the best 12-year-olds on earth play the Little League World Series championship. Earlier in the day, the US Open main draw opens in New York.
Watch about fifteen minutes of each with your athlete, and watch for two things only.
What happens right after a mistake. Count the seconds between a bad throw or a double fault and the player being ready for the next one. Then ask your athlete what they think the player did with those seconds.
The second serve versus the first. Across a quarter of a million tracked professional points, servers won about 69% of first-serve points but only around 52% to 55% of second-serve points. Watch how differently a player behaves before a second serve. That is what pressure looks like on someone very good at their job.
THE GOAL: To make the reset visible. Every kid can see a great shot. Almost none have been asked to watch the twelve seconds after a bad one, which is the only part of Sunday they can actually copy on Monday.
TRANSLATE IT TO YOUR SPORT: Whatever your family watches this weekend, pick the moment right after the mistake.
Soccer: Watch a keeper's next sixty seconds after conceding, or a striker's after a miss from six yards.
Hockey: Watch a goalie's routine after letting in a soft one.
Baseball: Watch a pitcher between pitches after a walk. The good ones look identical to how they looked before it.
THE FINAL WHISTLE
Nobody Fixed the Arm. They Changed the Task.
Here is the ending baseball does not tell often enough. Steve Blass won Game 7 of the 1971 World Series and finished runner-up for the Cy Young in 1972. In 1973 his ERA was 9.85. There was no injury and no crisis. The response was film review of his arm angle, foot placement and grip, plus mechanical adjustments. He retired at 29.
Compare that to what worked. Rick Ankiel could not throw a strike from the mound, so he moved to the outfield and played seven more seasons, throwing accurately the whole time. Jon Lester could not throw to first base, so he flipped it underhand and kept winning.
Nobody fixed the arm. They changed the task. That is worth saying out loud to a kid who is convinced something is permanently wrong with them. Something is wrong with one specific version of one specific movement, which is a much smaller problem than the one they think they have.
So this week, if a skill keeps betraying them, try the least intuitive thing on the list. Stop coaching it. Hand them a target, build them a ten-second routine, start close enough that they cannot miss, and say nothing else.
And when Gauff serves in New York, she will probably hit a few double faults, because she still leads her tour in them. She will also be one of the best players in the world. Both are true at the same time, and a kid who understands that is much harder to break.
See you on the sidelines,
The Seasoned Sidekick Team
We’re refining the roster—which section earned the "First Star" this week?
Share the Seasoned Sidekick with Your Friends!
Pass the Assist
Know a baseball family quietly panicking because a kid who could always throw suddenly cannot make the easy one? Or a tennis parent who has started holding their breath on second serves? This is the issue they need, and it will save them a month of filming the driveway and asking their kid to relax. Forward it before the weekend.
Keep Reading
August 20, 2026: The Real Risk of Tryout Week Isn't the Roster · What to do while your athlete's body and nerves are both trying out
August 13, 2026: Back to School Edition · Balancing Academics and Athletics
Medical Disclaimer: The content in The Seasoned Sidekick is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to replace the advice of a licensed physician, registered dietitian, certified athletic trainer, or licensed mental health professional. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your athlete's nutrition, training, or recovery plan, and seek professional support for concerns about your athlete's mental health. Individual needs vary. The information presented is based on available research and general guidelines for youth athletes.