Stay Positive: Self-Talk in Relation to Motivational Climate, Goal Orientation, and Self-Talk Encouragement in Tennis.

: Motivation among young athletes can be reflected in their self-talk, a behavior that is often encouraged by coaches. Most research on self-talk in sport involves self-report, thus observational studies of the actual self-talk used in sport in relation to athlete motivation and coach support are needed. : We observed young elite tennis athletes (N = 28) talking to themselves on the court and obtained self-reported measures of self-talk use, goal-orientation for sport, perception of coach motivational climate, and coach encouragement of self-talk.