I've been lurking around the community for just over a year, and on this subreddit for about 6 months. I've applied lots of things I've read here with great results.

I am also a huge tennis fan, have been so since around 2003/4 and I play a bit myself. Lately I've been thinking about the similarities between pickup and tennis and came up with a few I'd like to share.

1- You always miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You've probably heard this quote before and it applies to many other contexts outside tennis and pickup. In terms of tennis, once your opponent serves the ball towards you, you will definitely lose the point if you just stand there and let the ball pass you by. I'm sure you can draw the comparison with pickup every time you let someone walk by without initiating anything

2- You have to be active. In tennis, you don't win until you win the last point (or your opponent retires/defaults, but that's an irrelevant comparison). It doesn't matter if you are up 6-0, 5-0 and 40-0, if you don't win that last point you don't win the match. This is why I actually like tennis much more than, say, soccer where if you get lucky and your opponent scores an own goal you can run down the clock. With pickup, good job with getting an N-close, but then you have to be active and escalate to a K-close, F-close or whatever. And you can't sit there and wait for opportunities to come to you, you have to go get them yourself. For tennis enthusiasts, this is why Andy Murray has yet to win a major title. While Federer, Nadal and Djokovic play to win, Murray plays so that his opponent will lose which is an okay way to play but when the time comes you have to hit that aggressive forehand approach, and that's what separates the Federers from the Murrays.

3- Talent (tennis)/Good looks (pickup) will only get you so far, you need practise and hard work. In tennis, some players are born with more talent than others, but they also need to work. Perfect example: Roger Federer was very talented in his youth, he won the juniors Wimbledon trophy and was World Juniors number one, but once he started playing in the World tour he struggled. That was when he realised talent alone was not going to be enough and started working hard on his fitness, stamina and temper. Once he got that sorted, the titles started to come his way.

Similarly in pickup, I know a lot of great looking guys who end up sitting in the corner at pubs looking awkward, while average (and even poor) looking guys get all the girls. Do good looking guys have it easier? Yes, but they still need to be active too.

4- In the other direction, there's a difference between a disadvantage and an excuse. Average/below-average looking guys should not see their looks as an excuse to not try. At this point it is probably worth mentioning that I am Asian (not Western born Asian either, I was born and raised in Asia by an Asian family, although I went to an international school and attended University in the West). Every now and again I see a post here about how being Asian/non-White makes it hard, especially when gaming Caucasian/Western women. Firstly, if a woman is not interested in you simply because you are Asian, are you sure that is the kind of woman you want to end up with? Now, I would say that being Asian does have its drawbacks with regards to pickup. There's the whole family thing, the norm of living with your parents, but I think one point that hasn't been mentioned regarding Asian culture is the lack of physical contact in our cultures, which translates to difficulty with kino. The most basic example is how in the West you greet people by shaking their hands or kissing their cheeks. In Asia, it is some variation of a bow where you do not touch the other person at all. Even married couples are rarely seen holding hands or showing affection in public (although the new generation has embraced more Western norms in this regard, much to the dismay of our parents' generation). This translates to difficulty both for yourself as you are not used to initiating kino, as well as when you are gaming Asian women who are not used to getting touched. I've learned to adjust and vary my game. When I was gaming an Asian woman, giving her a hug to say goodbye was a big step and it freaked her out a bit (she said that's the first time a guy who wasn't yet her boyfriend has hugged her). Contrast this to Latin American women who kiss to say hello! In tennis, you have to adjust and vary your game according to your opponent, targeting their weakness. As for being Asian in tennis, our smaller frames are seen as a liability, but there's been a fair share of Asian tennis players who have overcome their disadvantages and in some cases used it in their favour (think Michael Chang).

5- Mindset. For me this is actually the most important thing. I am a student of psychology and truly believe that your mindset determines your success. Ask any tennis player who has just pulled an upset over someone they were not expected to beat, you wouldn't hear any of them say "I didn't believe I could win". If you go into a match against Rafael Nadal at the French Opening thinking "He's the greatest player on clay in history, I have no chance. I'm gonna get absolutely owned" then you will never win. If you go in thinking "Well he is good, but I'll give it my best shot and who knows", you may not win but you at least give yourself a chance. Similarly, I used to have this self-defeating mindset, not just "She's too hot/beautiful/good for me", but I kept coming up with excuses not to approach like "We're both exchange students, what will happen after we return home?" or "We're friends, we know each other too well". I have recently F-closed someone who all my friends thought was out of my league (later found out she's a model) and I realised the whole time I never had this mindset of "she's out of my league" and just went out there and had a good time.

6- In both pickup and tennis, you need balls.