The game after a break is the one that actually decides the set

Everyone celebrates the break and then loses it back, because the two games demand completely different psychological work.

A player breaks serve at four-all, the crowd stands up, and he loses his own serve to fifteen in the next four minutes. It happens constantly at every level and it is treated as bad luck or a wobble. I think it is structural, and it comes from the fact that the break game and the consolidation game ask for opposite things.

Breaking serve requires a player to take risks he would not normally take. Standing in on the return, going for lines, playing the first ball big because there may not be a second chance. That is a state of mind with the brakes off, and it has been building for several games, because break points do not appear from nowhere.

Then the point ends, he changes ends, and he has ninety seconds to become a completely different player. Now he has something to protect. The correct approach on his own serve is patient and percentage-based, first serves in, targets a foot inside the line rather than on it. The instinct carried over from the previous game is to keep swinging.

So he plays the consolidation game at the risk level that won him the break, misses two forehands he would normally never miss, and gives it straight back.

The opposite error is just as common and slightly more painful to watch. A player who understands the danger overcorrects, decides to be safe, takes pace off everything, and hands his opponent a game of short balls to attack. Safety on serve is not the same as caution, and the difference is that safety means a higher first serve percentage while caution means a slower second one.

What I would tell a player is to script the first three points of that game before walking to the line. Serve, target, and the shot he intends to hit off a mid-court reply, decided in advance. Not because the plan is optimal, but because a scripted plan stops the previous game's adrenaline from choosing for him.

The scoreboard rewards this asymmetrically and nobody talks about it. Break and hold, and you have taken the set. Break and get broken, and you have handed back the moment along with the game, and your opponent walks to the next return knowing you cannot close things out.

That knowledge is worth more than the game he just won.