Willing to Lose: Jannik Sinner and the Bar Exam
- Tommy Sangchompuphen
- Sep 8
- 3 min read
On Sunday, Carlos Alcaraz defeated Jannik Sinner in the U.S. Open men’s final, winning 6–2, 3–6, 6–1, 6–4. For Alcaraz, the victory cemented his reputation as the most dynamic and unpredictable player in men’s tennis. For Sinner, the loss forced him into honest self-reflection about what it will take to bridge the gap between him and his rival.
After the match, Sinner admitted something few athletes are willing to say out loud:
“I was very predictable today on court. He did many things; he changed up the game. That’s also his style of how he plays. Now it’s going to be on me if I want to make changes or not. We’re definitely gonna work on that. I’m going to aim to maybe even losing some matches from now on, but trying to do some changes, trying to be a bit more unpredictable as a player. Because I think that’s what I have to do to become a better tennis player.”
That willingness to lose—at least in the short term—is exactly the kind of mindset bar exam takers need to cultivate.
Losing in Practice, Winning Later
When studying for the bar, losing doesn’t mean failing the exam. It means being willing to get questions wrong in practice. It means writing out essays before you feel ready. It means sitting for multiple-choice sets that expose weaknesses instead of playing it safe with subjects you already know. Just as Sinner understands that practicing drop shots or serve-and-volley might cost him matches as he learns, bar takers need to understand that wrong answers are not a mark of failure.
They are the very things that lead to growth.
The Science of Struggle
Cognitive science backs this up. Psychologists call it “desirable difficulties”—the idea that the harder you work to retrieve knowledge, and the more you fail along the way, the stronger your learning becomes. Getting a question wrong and then studying the explanation imprints the rule in your memory much more effectively than rereading an outline. Attempting something before you feel ready forces your brain to build new pathways and strengthens recall when it counts. Struggle in practice, in other words, is not a bug of the process—it’s the feature that makes it work.
Stepping Beyond Comfort
Law school often reinforces comfort. Rereading notes, highlighting casebooks, and talking through doctrine in study groups all feel safe because they rarely force you into a true test of your knowledge. The bar exam, however, isn't graded on comfort; rather, it’s graded on performance under pressure. That’s why the most effective study strategies often feel uncomfortable, like writing essays cold, testing yourself on rules from memory, and drilling MBE questions in weaker areas to build familiarity and endurance. These strategies may leave you frustrated in the moment, but like Sinner’s commitment to developing new skills, they are what transform predictability into versatility.
Facing Your Alcaraz
For Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz is the ultimate test—an opponent whose unpredictability exposes his weaknesses. For bar takers, the exam itself is your Alcaraz. It will push you with fact patterns you didn’t anticipate, questions you don’t immediately know, and the stress of a ticking clock. The only way to meet that challenge is to be versatile, and the only way to build that versatility is to accept mistakes and discomfort during your preparation.
Jannik Sinner is willing to lose matches now to become the kind of player who can eventually beat Alcaraz. In the same way, bar exam takers must be willing to “lose” in practice—by getting questions wrong, attempting the unfamiliar, and enduring the frustration of early failure.
Losing in practice is not failure. It’s preparation.
