Tennis Nutrition: What to Eat and Drink Before, During, and After You Play

You can have the best forehand at the club and still fall apart in the third set because you turned up running on a coffee and finished on empty. Tennis is a stop-start endurance sport that can stretch past two hours, and what you eat and drink around a match has a bigger effect on how you play late than most people realise. This is not about supplements or a strict diet. It is the simple, practical stuff that keeps your legs and your concentration going from the first game to the last, especially in the Australian heat.

Before you play: fuel and top up

Your muscles run on carbohydrate, so the goal before a match is to arrive with your tank full. Two to three hours before you play, eat a normal meal built around slow carbs: oats, toast, rice, pasta, a sandwich, with some protein and not too much fat or fibre, which sit heavy. If you only have an hour, keep it lighter: a banana, a piece of toast with honey, a small bowl of cereal.

Start hydrated, do not try to catch up later. Drink water steadily through the day before you play. Turning up already a little dehydrated is the single most common reason social players fade and cramp, and it is completely avoidable.

During the match: little and often

The changeover, every two games, is your refuelling window. The rule is small sips and small bites, often, rather than gulping a litre at the end when it is too late.

Water for anything up to about an hour.
An electrolyte drink once you are past an hour, or any time it is hot. You lose salt as well as water in sweat, and replacing only water can leave you flat and cramping. A sports drink or an electrolyte tablet in your bottle does the job.
A banana or a few snakes/jellies in a long match for quick carbohydrate. This is exactly why you see players eating bananas at the change of ends. It works.

Sip something on every changeover whether you feel like it or not. Thirst lags behind actual dehydration, so by the time you feel parched you are already behind.

The Australian heat factor

Summer tennis here is a different challenge. In the heat you sweat far more, lose electrolytes faster, and fatigue earlier, so your fuelling and hydration plan has to scale up. Pre-cool with cold drinks, freeze a bottle so you have icy water late in the match, and lean on electrolytes rather than plain water once you are sweating hard. Our full guide to playing tennis in the Australian summer heat covers the heat-specific side in detail. The short version: in summer, drink more, salt more, and start earlier than you think you need to.

After you play: recover for next time

What you do in the half hour after a hard match sets up how you feel and play next time. Your body is primed to refill its fuel stores and repair muscle, so give it both carbohydrate and protein: a proper meal if you can, or something simple like a tub of yoghurt and fruit, a smoothie, or a sandwich and some milk if a meal is a while away. Keep drinking too, water and a few electrolytes, until you are back to normal. Replacing what you lost is the difference between bouncing back and dragging yourself around for two days.

What to skip

A big, fatty or heavy meal right before playing. It sits in your stomach and makes you sluggish. Give yourself time to digest.
Sugary energy drinks as your only fuel. A quick spike followed by a crash is not what you want mid-match. Use proper carbohydrate and electrolytes instead.
Too much caffeine. A normal coffee is fine and can even help focus, but loading up makes some people jittery and dehydrated. Know how you react.
Alcohol the night before. It dehydrates you, and you will feel it in the legs the next day.

The simple plan

Eat a carb-based meal a couple of hours before, arrive already hydrated, sip water or electrolytes on every changeover, grab a banana in a long match, and refuel with carbs and protein within half an hour of finishing. None of it is complicated, and all of it adds up to a player who is still moving well and thinking clearly when the match is on the line, which is exactly when most social players have already run out of fuel.

Good fuelling pairs with a good warm-up. See our 10-minute warm-up routine, and if you are managing a niggle, our guide to common tennis injuries and recovery.