ACCELERATE YOUR EFFORTS AFTER WINNING A CLOSE FIRST SET
Doing what comes naturally is not always a great idea when it comes to winning tennis matches. Case in point – what to do after you win a closely contested first set. Here you have expended a great deal of mental and physical energy getting the set under your belt. You have felt the mounting stress that naturally occurs as you work to close out a difficult opponent. Afterwards, an instantaneous and palpable feeling of relief floods your system. You have successfully triumphed over the tension of set point. Now your subconscious mind wants a breather before it shoulders the rigors and pressures of the drive to finish the match. And with a one set lead, it senses the leeway to take that breather.
As a general rule, it is our nature to escape, whenever possible, the unpleasantness of excessive stress. In a hard-fought tennis match the stress on the player in the lead (paradoxically, it seems) increases as he or she progresses towards the conclusion of a set and, ultimately, the match. After winning a long, difficult, tense set there often occurs a conflict between the player’s logical mind, which tells him/her to keep applying the pressure in order to win the match, and the player’s subconscious mind, which suggests that he/she temporarily escape all this unpleasantness by easing up and taking a well-deserved mental break. In any case, with a set under one’s belt it certainly feels like one has a little room to relax before jumping back into the fray.
When physically and mentally tired, even the pros sometimes make the mistake of yielding to these counterproductive subconscious entreaties. For example, the world’s number one player, Roger Federer, eased up with a two sets to love lead over David Nalbandian in the finals of the 2005 year’s Masters Championship, only to see Nalbandian bounce back to beat him in a fifth set tiebreaker.
In this situation, forewarned is forearmed. If you win a close first set resolve to immediately hump yourself up and redouble your efforts at the start of the second. Try to convince yourself that the match is starting over and that you must jump out to an early lead. Come roaring out of the box, more aggressive, resolute, and focused than you were in the first set. Concentrate on each point to minimize your errors and show your opponent that he or she is in for a long and painful afternoon. Your opponent, trailing in the match, may be on the edge of discouragement. Your immediate objective is to shove him/her over the edge by being tough. Keep in mind that your opponent is looking for some sign of weakness on your part to convince him or her that the first set was a fluke. Any weakness on your part offers hope and a crack in the door of your offense. As the second set begins you want to keep the door shut or, better still, slam it on your opponent’s foot.
THE ‘GOLDEN RULE’ OF TENNIS
The ‘Golden Rule’ of tennis, the one simple rule that, if followed, will keep you out of more trouble than anything else is: Never do anything on court that doesn’t help you win. Granted, it sounds absurdly obvious, but few people consistently follow it. Adhering to this rule requires one to test any action before taking it with the simple question, “Will this action help me win?” If the answer is not yes, don’t do it.
The great players rarely lose track, at least at some lower level of consciousness, that the object of the game is to win the match. The average player, by contrast, often seems mindless of this elementary fact. Yet even professionals get caught up in the emotions of the match on occasion
A truly bizarre example of what can happen when one does not apply this test was provided by my friend, Jeff Tarango, a brilliant, funny, Stanford-educated tennis professional at Wimbledon in 1996. Tarango, then 26 years old, had never before won a match at Wimbledon. But this year he was in the third round and had an excellent chance of getting to the round of 16 because he was playing Alexander Mronz of Germany, whose name in the tennis world is hardly a household (or for that matter, pronounceable) word.
During the course of the match, Tarango hit what he thought was an ace, but it was called a fault. After fruitlessly trying to convince the umpire to overrule the linesman, Tarango was heckled by the crowd as he walked into position for his second serve. Angrily he told them to “Shut up.” The umpire gave him a code violation for “audible obscenity.” Although it only amounted to a warning, this so infuriated Tarango that he demanded that the referee supervisor come to the court. The supervisor dutifully did so and told Tarango to continue playing. Tarango then called the umpire “the most corrupt official in the game” and was promptly assessed a point penalty for verbal abuse which cost him the game. At this Tarango shouted “That’s it. No way. That’s it.” He picked up his bags, stalked off the court, and entered the history books as the first player in the Open era to default himself at Wimbledon. To make matters worse (yes, it’s always possible), Tarango held a press conference at which he justified calling the umpire “corrupt” by accusing him, on the basis of hearsay, of having, in the past, ‘given’ matches to players who were his friends.
Now let’s tote up the damages. Tarango threw away an excellent chance to advance in the tournament since he was, after all, favored in the match. He was defaulted in his mixed doubles, which did not endear him to his partner. It cost him a lot of money which he could ill afford since he was not one of the stars of the game—total fines estimated in the neighborhood of $50,000 and additional prize money he might have won. Finally, his public image was not enhanced by making himself look like an overgrown brat who would have been well served by a few good spankings as a child. All in all it was not one of Tarango’s better afternoons, the object of the game (to win the match) having apparently slipped his mind.
With all these damages accruing as a result of his actions, one might reasonably wonder how a man of Tarango’s substantial intellect could have so completely lost track of his simple goal of winning the match? The answer is fear of failure (he was losing), exacerbated by the accumulated stress and emotion of the situation, drove his actions. Quitting was his unconscious way of escaping from a painfully stressful situation that he feared would end badly. If you don’t believe this, picture the following thought experiment: God appears over Tarango’s shoulder and whispers in his ear that he is guaranteed to win the match. Now what would Tarango have done? He might still have fought with the umpire, but I would bet a lot of money that he would have stuck around to win the match.
(Just for honesty’s sake, I must confess that during my playing career I did some things in tournaments that were almost as counterproductive as this Tarango story – though they were less dramatic. So I am by no means taking a ‘holier than thou’ attitude. Under sufficient pressure, most of us are capable of rather foolish actions.)
The great champions are different.
John McEnroe had a similar fiery temperament, but his situational judgment was usually able to retain its ultimate rationality even in the throes of emotionality and outcome uncertainty. Because at some deep level he sensed that he was going to win, he was able to comprehend where the line demarcating disaster was and exert enough self-control (although it didn’t look like it) to avoid crossing it. He got into emotional twits where he made unreasonable demands, berated linesmen and umpires, and threw matches into confusion, but he usually benefited from this behavior. His behavior intimidated linesmen into giving him the benefit of the doubt on close calls; it disturbed his opponents and put off their games; and McEnroe stimulated himself with adrenaline and often played better.
One year he did manage to get himself defaulted in the Australian Open, but he said after the match that he had been unaware of a recent rule change where the authorities had cut down by one the number of abuses a player was allowed before default. The progression toward default had formerly been ‘warning’, ‘point penalty’, ‘game penalty’, ‘DEFAULT’, but this had been changed to ‘warning’, ‘point penalty’, ‘DEFAULT’. McEnroe simply miscalculated and thought he could afford one more penalty. In contrast with Tarango, McEnroe may sometimes have looked like an uncontrolled, irrational wild man, but all the while he was carefully counting his penalties so that he could stop himself before he went too far. McEnroe didn’t often forget where his interests lie.
McEnroe was cunning in other ways about expressing his frustration and anger. He knew cursing and abusing umpires would lead to code violations. So instead of cursing them he would say things like, “You are so low that words can’t describe how low I think you are!” Of course this is every bit as insulting and hurtful as cursing the person, but it made the code violation difficult to pin on him.
We are often not as rational as we should be.
Human beings are supposed to be rational creatures, but too often our emotions drive our actions while our reasoning abilities are relegated to the back of the bus. This is frequently the case in tennis matches because the one-on-one aspect of tennis competition makes it an inherently stressful and emotional situation. Errant emotions during match-play tempt us to forget our objectives (winning the match) and engross ourselves in anger, personal antagonism, defeatism, excuse-making, or other counter-productive but stress-reducing mental states. Keeping in mind our Golden Rule test of “Will This Help Me Win?” can help ward off such debilitating and destructive mental states.
RELAXATION HELPS POWER AND SPEED
I was watching a show on ESPN about famed pro football coach, Bill Walsh, who was particularly notable for his success in producing great quarterbacks (Joe Montana, San Francisco 49er Hall of Famer, amongst others). In describing Walsh’s techniques, one young quarterback told of how Walsh stood directly behind him in an early practice session and kept telling him to throw the ball “easier.” As he mastered the ability, under pressure, to throw the ball “easier,” the young man commented that it made his passes more accurate in addition to making the ball easier for his receivers to catch. What, you may ask, does this have to do with tennis? A great deal, it turns out.
Staying loose: Walsh was really suggesting that the quarterback be more relaxed and smooth when he threw – that forcing the toss, “muscling” the ball by trying to throw it too hard – made it more difficult to control. When one’s muscles are tense and stiff, coordination is adversely effected. And it is smooth coordination, rather than sheer muscle power, that allows athletes in various sports to generate great power with little effort and to control that power. The same factors are at work when one hits a baseball, throws a javelin, swims, sprints, or, most importantly for our purposes, hits a tennis ball. In all of these activities, relaxation and smooth coordination produce the best results. Trying too hard, becoming stiff and forcing one’s muscles is invariably counter-productive.
Staying relaxed increases racket speed. Most knowledgeable tennis professionals accept the idea that groundstroke racket velocity is largely generated by rotating your upper body forward. This whips your arm forward to power the stroke. But a crucial additional factor is to keep your arm and racket hand relaxed and flexible during the stroke. This improves control and “feel.” It allows you to smoothly adjust to awkward positions, bad bounces, or misjudged ball velocities or trajectories. In contrast, when you use your arm muscles to power the stroke or if these muscles become tense and stiff because you are trying to hit the ball too hard you will sacrifice control, flexibility, and ultimately power as well. (A rigid arm can not be muscled forward with as much velocity as a loose arm can be whipped forward by body rotation.)
The same factors are equally important when serving. Maximum racket velocity comes from rotating the shoulders while straightening the bent torso and legs. Keeping loose and relaxed during this process is essential. Stiff arm muscles and an inflexible wrist inhibit the whipping arm motion that gives the serve its power. Great servers deliberately relax their arms and hands just before they serve and rely, for high racket velocity, on a well-coordinated, smooth service action. (Think Pete Sampras) Overtly trying to hit the ball too hard, rushing, or muscling the serve results only in reduced velocity, inaccuracy, and a sore shoulder.
Relaxation helps movement. Looseness, flexibility, and smoothness are equally valuable when it comes to movement on the court. You can move fastest and change directions best when you are relaxed. Moving any limb requires that when one muscle contracts its opposing muscle must be simultaneously relaxed. Otherwise the limb can not move. Becoming overly tense causes all muscles to contract, and when muscles fight each other like this movement slows down.
Roger Federer is a beautiful example of how relaxation promotes smooth, graceful, and incredibly rapid movement. Because he is so loose and well-balanced, Federer can change directions in an instant. This makes it exceptionally difficult to catch him moving in the wrong direction. He runs easily – so easily, in fact, that his speed is not at all apparent. Rafael Nadal’s speed, by contrast, is often noted as a key to his success. Speed is obvious in his case because he runs rather hard. Although Federer is equally fast or even faster, it happens so smoothly that it is deceptive. The great movers of the past were equally relaxed, smooth, and unobtrusively fast. Players like John McEnroe, Ken Rosewall, Bjorn Borg, and Pancho Gonzales, like Federer, tended to draw comments on their spectacular shot-making, but their speed around the court was the glue that held it all together.
Make an effort to deliberately relax. Since many of us are not naturally relaxed, smooth, and graceful on the court we must make a conscious effort to improve in this area. This is an important addition to developing proper stroking technique. When you are working on your strokes make relaxation, smoothness, and good balance part of your agenda. On all strokes, watch the ball while deliberately keeping your arms and hands loose and flexible. As for movement, relax and stay loose as you lower your center of gravity in preparation for initiating movement. Then try to run gracefully and light, gliding to the ball rather than straining and forcing movement.
Since most of us have been taught the virtues of effort and hard work, there is a tendency, when we really want to win, to push ourselves over the top, both physically and emotionally. On a big point we may simply want it too much and stiffen up with determination. Recognizing this danger, it is useful, at such times, to pull back slightly. Instead, keep your eyes wide open and alert to the whole court situation, while you remain, above all, loose and flexible.
Intelligent Strategy Can Lead to Victory
Intelligent strategies can often overcome stroke deficiencies and enable a player with inferior tennis weapons to defeat a physically superior opponent. In matches where the contestants are closely matched physically, strategy is often the deciding factor. I believe that this was the case in the 2002 US Open final where Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi to win his final Slam before retirement. Of course the match itself is old history, but I believe it provides a good example of strategic intelligence in action. Sampras used an efficient strategy and won while Agassi did not, and lost.
Before the 2002 Open:
But first let’s recap the events leading up to the final. Sampras was getting older and, as is often the case as age creeps up, his results were becoming more and more spotty. (The same issue seems to be appearing with Federer in the last year or so.) I suspect this happens because as most players get into their late 20’s the gap between their physically good days and bad day seems to grow. Players can even have periods of time in their 30’s where they was feel as good as ever, like a phantom Spring, and they can play as well as ever and beat anybody. But these are mixed in with the bad days, of which there tend to be more and more each year, and where they take astoundingly bad losses.
Sampras’ results in the year prior to the 2002 Open had been of this kind – almost nightmarishly poor for him, and far worse, in fact, than even his aging game warranted. His losses reached an incredible nadir when he was defeated on his favorite surface, grass, at Wimbledon by lowly ranked Swiss journeyman, George Bastl. As one might expect, the vultures of the press circled and barraged a rankled Sampras with what he considered insulting questions about the “R” word. When did he plan to retire? Growled Sampras, “I intend to keep competing as long as I feel I can still win a major.” “Poor deluded fool,” thought the press. “Just doesn’t realize that he is washed up.” Well, old Pete wasn’t quite as washed up as he looked. His confidence had slipped, but much of his great skill still lurked in the bushes, waiting only for a couple of those latent good days to reappear and get him the wins he needed to rebuild his confidence. Then he would again become a dangerous foe. And the 2002 U.S. Open provided these.
Pete must have said his prayers with extraordinary vigor before the tournament began. Everything broke his way. His draw could not have been better. Almost every significant player he faced was either injured or mentally discombobulated or both. Tommy Haas was hurting and playing poorly, and the then-young but talented Andy Roddick, in addition to being sub-par physically, fussed and fretted his way to a straight set loss. Greg Rusedski, on the other hand, appeared physically whole, but his flimsy serve returns and passing shots allowed Pete to attack him at net, hold serve easily, and keep the match close until, as he had in 8 of their 9 previous matches, Pete figured out a way to snatch a few crucial points on Rusedski’s serve to win the match.
With these wins under his belt, Pete gained enough confidence to simply grind through his semifinal against an over-matched Sjeng Schalken. But Pete’s final stroke of good fortune appeared in the form of his opponent in the final, Andre Agassi, who defeated Lleyton Hewitt in the other semi. (Those of you tennis history buffs with good memories you may recall that the ferocious young Hewitt slaughtered Pete in the Open final the previous year, while Agassi had lost to Pete at the Open every time they played – twice in the finals and once in the quarters). By now, Pete’s mere presence seemed to scare Andre.
Agassi had quit tanking and become a consistently strong competitor.
With his new-found improvement in mental resilience and with his game in wonderful form, Andre appeared to have the edge. He was having an excellent year and was in incredible shape (thanks to the diligence and genius of the ever-present Gil Reyes). To top it off, he had Steffi Graf waiting in the wings as an incentive to keep fighting when the going got tough. Andre had, historically, been known to wave the white flag a trifle early, but doing so now and coming home to face the indomitable Steffi would be an unattractive prospect. He wasn’t going to quit, but on the other hand, looking at Pete across the net was, for Andre, a scary case of déjà vu. That and the flurry of aces coming off of Pete’s racket at the outset may have caused Andre’s brain to freeze – which finally brings us to the topic of strategy. Pete played a strategically brilliant match while Andre did not.
The basic rules of strategic planning:
The essence of successful strategy is to devise a plan that takes advantage of some part of your game that is better than some part of your opponent’s game. You do not have to be better than your opponent at everything in order to beat him. In fact, you can be worse at everything except one thing and still win, as long as you take advantage of that one thing. In strategic planning you ask yourself, “What do I do better than he does?” The answer usually originates from a gross assessment of your own and your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Using this information you can formulate a match-up where you have an advantage. Then you try to structure as many points as possible to use this edge. (Your ideal objective is to use your strengths to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses, while hiding and protecting your own weaknesses.)
Obvious examples abound. If your backhand is better than your opponent’s, try to get into backhand crosscourt rallies. (Don’t let your opponent get you into forehand rallies where his forehand may be better than yours.) If your volley is better than your opponent’s backhand passing shot, continually go to the net on his backhand. (Don’t let him keep you on the baseline where he can pit his superior groundstrokes against yours.) If your forehand is better than your opponent’s backhand but his backhand is better than yours, run around your backhand whenever possible and hit your forehand to your opponent’s backhand. Etc. All you want to identify is something you do better than your opponent.
Be persistent in using your advantage.
Once you discover an advantageous match-up use it over and over. You can throw in occasional change-ups on less important points to keep your opponent guessing, but always return to your basic strategy, particularly on the big points. Don’t worry about getting too smart. Once you get a strategic advantage the onus is on your opponent to come up with a way to escape. If he cannot, he will lose. You don’t have to do anything but persist.
Looking at the relative strengths and weaknesses of Sampras and Agassi:
With this in mind, let’s go back to the Sampras – Agassi match. Andre’s strengths were in his balanced, consistent and deadly groundstrokes, his mobility, and his fitness. In particular, his backhand was much better than Pete’s. Pete’s advantages were in his overpowering serve, volley, and forehand. Since he was less fit than Andre, Pete’s best plan was to keep the points short. He planned to take chances early, and use his serve, forehand, and net game to attack and end points quickly. Pete recognized that the longer he stayed on the baseline with Andre the worse off he would become. He was determined not to let this happen and was singularly successful at using his weapons to shorten the points. He served and volleyed, chipped and charged to net on his return of Agassi’s second serve, and attacked as quickly and severely as possible with his forehand whenever he was caught on the baseline.
Andre, on the other hand, made no obvious effort to implement an advantageous strategy of his own. Instead he counterpunched Pete’s attacks or tried to beat him to the punch with attacks of his own, possibly because he feared that Pete was about to hurt him at any instant. In essence he tried to beat Pete at his own attacking game, matching his attacking weapons against Pete’s, and it was a losing proposition because Pete’s were better.
A better plan for Agassi:
There was not much to be done about Pete’s service games because of the violence of the delivery, both first and second serves. Andre did what he could there, but if I had been coaching him on the court I would have suggested that he keep a better eye out for Pete’s favored serves and move over a step to cover these. In particular, Pete caught Andre repeatedly for the first two sets with winning second serves down the ”T” in the ad court. Andre finally moved over to cover these towards the end of the match, but he should have been on to it about five years earlier since this wasn’t his first match against Pete. * See footnote
Andre could have constructed a more reasonable plan had he started with the basics – that long points were greatly to his advantage and his backhand was better than Pete’s. Andre’s plan would then have started by trying to get into long backhand crosscourt rallies with Pete. This would have extended the points and given Pete less opportunity to mount an attack. It would have tired and weakened Pete. By late in the match it would have reduced his ability to hit aces, big forehands, and lunging volley winners, the shots that ultimately led to Agassi’s demise.
In the long crosscourt backhand exchanges Andre would need to be wary of prematurely hitting his backhand down the line to Pete’s dangerous forehand. He would need to wait for big openings before attacking Pete’s forehand side. These would have occurred during the course of the backhand crosscourt exchanges when Pete either: 1.) hit his backhand short, 2.) hit it down the line, or 3.) hit it down the center. Then Andre could hurt Pete on the forehand side without suffering undue risk from a Sampras counterattack. In the meantime, Andre would have had the advantage in the long backhand exchanges, where Pete was disadvantaged from start to finish. He would have had to keep moving back and forth to the center to guard against Agassi’s excellent backhand down the line but would have had no opportunity for an attack. (In the event, Andre did none of these things. He played Pete as he would have played anyone else – by hitting into the open court and moving him side to side. This worked against most people because Andre was such a great striker of the ball, but not this time.)
One of Agassi’s biggest mistakes was going for big first serves in an attempt to hit aces or force missed serve returns. Although he did get some free points, he missed them too often and gave Sampras a chance to shorten the points by attacking his second serve. Even when Andre hit his first serve in and elicited an error, Pete at least got the benefit of a short point. Instead, Andre should have spun in more first serves to Pete’s backhand. Although Pete could hit the occasional great return here, most of the points would then have started with Andre in control and able to grind Sampras on the baseline. (As an aside, the player receiving serve will usually hit a weaker return off of a first serve as compared to an identical second serve. This is because on first serves the receiver will be returning from further back and will be less sure of what the server is going to do.)
Andre also served randomly to Pete’s forehand and backhand, constantly trying to fool him and keep him off balance. This is unwise against a player whose forehand is so much better than his backhand. It was Pete’s forehand that was most likely to hurt Andre and was at the heart of Pete’s baseline attack. Of course Andre could not simply hit every ball to Pete’s backhand. He had to keep him guessing somewhat, but Andre’s serve should have been more biased toward the backhand, particularly on the big points.
Sampras was beginning to tire in the fourth set, even with shortened points.
All of this came to a head in the fourth set. Pete was starting to wilt and desperately needed an opening for a quick finish. Andre eventually gave it to him while serving at 4- all. Andre had faced break points twice in this game and had twice spun in first serves to Pete’s backhand. Both times Pete chipped returns into the middle of the court and both times Andre took control of the points and finished them with punishing groundstrokes. But when Pete reached break point for a third time Andre opted to fool him with a first serve to his forehand. It was a fatal mistake. Pete whacked a vicious return into the corner, broke serve, and finished Andre off in the next game.
Use cold logic to develop strategic plans.
It was a great match between two great champions. Yet as Agassi apparently did, even great champions occasionally make poor strategic decisions. It is my guess that it happened because the situation was huge and Andre’s experience against Pete in such situations had been so bad that it caused a bit of a “deer in the headlights” response. Strategy is best determined coldly and logically. We all must beware of the strong emotions that sometimes surround tennis matches, impacting our logic systems and blinding us to effective strategies.
* As a general rule, everyone has favored serves and it is the obligation of the receiver to figure out what these are as soon as possible and move over to close them up. This forces the server to use less favored serves that he is more likely to miss. The receiver’s objective is to balance the damage from all possible serves and to avoid being hurt repeatedly with a particular favored serve. He does this by moving his receiving position. The common receiving error is to stand in a balanced central position against all opponents and attempt to cover all serves equally.
BELIEVING IN YOURSELF
As competitors we are all told, “It is crucially important to believe in yourself.” Our coaches regale us with tales of how great players believe in themselves and how this belief carries them past obstacles and leads to victory in major championships. We are admonished that unless we believe in ourselves, we can work on our strokes and conjure up cunning game plans all we like, but victory will, nonetheless, remain elusive. In fact, if we don’t believe in ourselves, we are exhibiting the dreaded “loser’s mentality.”
It’s hard to talk yourself into it.
Convinced of its value, we continually search the recesses of our hearts for this vital conviction. As we walk on court to face an opponent who is ranked above us and who is expected to beat us, we look everywhere for self-belief and, horror of horrors, come up empty! Try as we may, we simply can’t bring ourselves to presume, with ample certainty, that we are going to win. The humbling conclusion is that something is wrong with us. We are missing that crucial mental element common to winners – belief in ourselves.
So we try to get it. We meditate about winning, thinking over and over, “I am going to win. I am going to win.” It doesn’t help. We visualize winning. In our mind’s eye we picture hitting great shots past a helpless opponent. It momentarily feels good, but reality sets back in quickly. Unfortunately, we still have to actually do it. As a last resort we try positive self talk. “I am powerful. My opponent can do nothing to defeat me.” In the end, however, it all comes to naught when we walk on the court. Our highly-ranked opponent looks as ominous as ever.
You can win without it.
Are those of us not blessed with the champion’s certainty doomed to defeat? Not by a long-shot! Consider the words of Marat Safin after he won the 2005 Australian Open: “This is a huge relief for me, because I didn’t believe I could win. I’ve already lost two finals here before and I started to doubt myself. I thought it was going to happen again.” Obviously it is possible to win without believing in yourself. It is easier, of course, to win if you do, but if you don’t there are a number of ways you can improve your chances of winning.
Self belief = Confidence:
First, however, lets take a deeper look at what we really mean when we talk about “believing in yourself.” We are really talking about confidence. (Hereafter, I will use the terms “confidence” and “self belief” interchangeably.) And we all know, of course, that having confidence (self belief) is a great help in winning tennis matches. But what causes confidence, and more importantly, what can we do to get more of it? Can we get it out of some psychologist’s self-help book or, better yet, is there a pill we can take? (And if so, in which drug stores are they sold?)
Confidence comes from history of success.
Keep your wallet in your pocket, because there is, unfortunately, no intellectual way to create confidence out of uncertainty. As they used to say at Smith Barney, it must be obtained the old-fashioned way, you must “earn it.” And this is done by winning. Only winning begets true confidence because confidence is a subconscious and emotional “expectation of success,” and we develop these expectations, in large part, because of past experience.
For example, since the sun has, without fail, come up in the morning for the past billion years or so we expect it to come up tomorrow morning. In fact we are completely confident it will do so. If it had, historically, come up only nine mornings out of ten we would still be pretty confident of its rising tomorrow, but not absolutely confident, and if its history had been to come up one morning in ten we would be downright dubious about it.
It is the same with tennis. The more you win the more you subconsciously expect to win. Another way of expressing this is that you become more “confident.” With this increased self belief in hand, you become stimulated rather than frightened in the clutch and are, therefore, more rather than less likely to produce your best tennis. (This is the circular nature of confidence. Winning begets confidence and confidence begets winning.) On the other hand if you have been losing a lot you develop the lurking fear, particularly when the score is close and it is near the end of the match, that something bad is about to happen – that things will go horribly wrong and you will be beaten. Simply put, you will lack “confidence.” And, of course, having or lacking confidence will profoundly affect the quality of your play.
Increases in confidence with victory are cumulative – the more you win, the higher your confidence gets. Moreover, recency of victory is another factor. Winning a match yesterday has more impact on your present level of confidence than winning one last week or last month. By the same token, the confidence caused by a victory gradually decays with the passage of time, although the decay never completely reduces your level of confidence back to where it was before the last victory.
Some people are just naturally more confident than others.
Underlying this type of confidence is your basic confidence level (level of self belief) – the confidence level that you were either born with or that was formed during early childhood. (Nobody knows, for sure, the relative importance to our basic levels of confidence of genetics and early experience.) This means, simply, that, for whatever reasons, we are not all equally confident to begin with. Some fortunate individuals just start out more confident than others. Although all of us become more confident with victory, regardless of our initial confidence level, these same confident individuals seem to experience a greater increase in confidence with each victory (as well as a lesser decrease in confidence with each loss) than the rest of us.
Hope is a vital replacement for self-belief.
What does all this amount to? First, self belief is not something that coaches ought to admonish their pupils to have. No one can tell you to have it. You are born with some but get most of it by winning. Second, there is nothing wrong with you if you don’t have self belief when you step on court to play someone better than you. Self belief implies certainty, and reasonable people simply don’t feel certain of beating people who are better than they are. The big danger here is that you will think that lack of self belief means you have some particular character weakness. This is debilitating. Since there is nothing special you can do about getting it other than playing lots of players worse than you, the best option is to put the issue entirely aside.
All you really have to believe when facing a player who is reputedly better than you is that victory is possible, because it is. Safin’s statements prove it. (Let the other guys worry about whether they are endowed with a sufficient amount of self belief.) All you need to walk on court with is a hopeful attitude, emotional control, fortitude, and a well-practiced set of strokes, and you will win your fair share of matches.
CHAMPIONS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND TRY TO CONTROL THEIR DESTINIES
EXCERPTED FROM “THE WINNER’S MIND”
High achievers possess a characteristic termed by psychologists as an “internal locus of control.” If we throw out the big words and translate this into English, it means that champions feel they can personally control the outcome of events. This feeling empowers them. They believe that their own efforts will ultimately produce results, and they feel responsible for success or failure.
This is in contrast to the less effective person who has an “external locus of control.” These people believe that the outcome of events is determined by factors beyond their control – by other individuals, society as a whole, the government, their employers, or just luck. Why? Because fear of failure impels them to dodge responsibility. Their insecurities delude them into believing their own excuses, and, attributing failure to factors other than themselves, they learn little from their losses. So they lose more often than they should. Fearing that they will lose, these people try to avoid the pain of that loss by shirking responsibility for it.
This does not mean that the champions are so irrational as to really think that everything is under their control? Certainly not. They are well aware that good and ill-fortune exist. They have had ample empirical proof of it because they have lost in the past, so they would not bet their lives on the outcome of any particular contest. But the crucial distinction is that they act as if they had this control. In their cores they are self-reliant. They unconsciously assume that they have the power to force a win if they apply sufficient effort, even though they know rationally that there is risk of loss. It is somewhat schizophrenic in that these two conflicting ideas co-exist at different levels of consciousness. At the conscious level they know they could lose, but at the unconscious level they feel they will win.
A corollary belief of the champions is that losing is their fault. This makes losses hurt more, but it also motivates them to try harder as well as to analyze their performances afterward for mistakes or weaknesses. They mentally rehash their actions to figure out what they did wrong. Once they have zoned in on their mistakes and weaknesses, they can work intelligently to improve and can avoid making the same mistakes again.
HOW DO WE MEASURE IT?
Psychologists use a “ring toss” game to differentiate individuals with an “internal locus of control” from those with an “external locus of control.” The game’s objective is to see how many rings out of ten a subject can toss over a peg at a distance. The experimenter allows the subject to choose the distance. They have found that the people with an “internal locus of control” choose a reasonable but challenging distance. They choose a distance where their efforts can be effective. The people with an “external locus of control” tend to choose distances that are either so close that they can hardly miss or so far that success is a matter of chance only – thus reducing the risk that their efforts will be the cause of any failure.
One former member of my Pepperdine team, lets call him Jeff, exemplified the “external locus of control” mentality. Jeff appeared to have everything going for him. He came from a wealthy family, had great physical talent and was good-looking, bright, well spoken, and extremely successful with the ladies. Unfortunately for him, he was also extremely insecure.
This led to his becoming unpopular with his teammates. He was self-centered, shallow, and critical of others. Appearances were overly important to Jeff, and he was quick to blame anyone but himself for his problems. On the tennis court he had a tendency to choke under pressure, yet he could not squarely face this and take steps to counter it. He preferred to fake it and pretend that he did not choke.
In a broad sense, tennis is a game of controlled risk. The successful players take the minimum risk necessary to accomplish their objectives. Along these lines, they know their own limitations and virtually never hit the ball so hard that it is out of control, sensing that in doing so the percentages are against them. Bystanders may think it is courageous to whack the ball and go for a big shot in important situations, but champions don’t do it unless they have a legitimate core feeling that they will MAKE THE SHOT. The less successful, on the other hand, will insist on forcing the big shot even when they are fearful and lack confidence in the shot. Consequently, they will usually miss and lose. Hitting hard and hoping the ball will go in is a formula for disaster in tennis. It is like playing the ring toss game and throwing the ring from across the street. In tennis the winning players don’t hope. They control the ball and hit shots that they feel they can routinely make.
As you might imagine, Jeff used to go for big shots in the important situations. And as you also might imagine, he used to miss them. That was bad enough, but it was even less helpful when he urged his teammates to do the same thing.
In one big match against a rival school the score was tied at four matches all. The deciding match was being played and the members of both teams were crowded along the sidelines, verbally driving their teammate on. The tension grew as the match progressed deep into the third set. Finally our guy reached match point by getting an ad on his opponent’s serve. Our guy needed a good serve return but that would not be easy since the opponent had a nasty serve and the pressure of the situation made hitting any shot difficult.
In these circumstances my usual advice is to take a deep breath, pick a spot for your return, focus on the ball, and play the point as routinely as possible. Since your opponent is under as much pressure as you are, you need to avoid trying a wild, panicky shot. This usually results in a quick error and lets your opponent off the hook without having to play. But the advice Jeff shouted out to his teammate exemplified the loser’s mentality. “Take a chance. Go for it!” he yelled. He was speaking for himself and was endorsing the old “hit and hope” strategy. Jeff had put into words what I had sensed about him all along, which was his desire to give up responsibility for outcomes. Not trusting in his own ability to perform (but pretending that he did), Jeff was only too happy to put his fate in the hands of the Gods – and remove it from his own.
If Jeff could have acknowledged his own fears and insecurities he could have helped himself. He needed to face the fact that his nerves would not allow him to go for a big shot in certain high-pressure situations. Realizing this, Jeff could have worked on relaxation and focusing techniques that would have allowed him to perform better. He could have attempted less demanding shots in these situations. Faking it and lying to himself only doomed him to endlessly repeat his original errors.
By contrast, the people that take responsibility themselves – that take pains to control their own destinies and are willing to accept the consequences – be it in business, sport or life are the ones that win. Those that don’t (like Jeff) get beaten.
THOUGHTS ON CLIFF RICHEY’S NEW BOOK, “ACING DEPRESSION”
Richey is honest, open, and smart.
I thought Andre Agassi’s book was unusually honest and insightful, but it pales in comparison to Cliff Richey’s new book. Cliff describes his own mental processes as he developed into a tennis champion and later, as he was stricken with debilitation depression in an incredibly lucid, insightful, and vivid manner. The reader is able to virtually ride along inside Richey’s mind during the triumphs and horrors of his past 50 years. His descriptions are so genuine you can almost feel what he felt. And you can certainly see what he saw.
Cliff was a near-great player in the 1970’s, achieving the #1 ranking in the United States, reaching the late rounds but not winning most of the Slams, and beating the best players of his day – Laver, Newcombe, Connors, Smith, Rosewall, Roche, Emerson, etc. Cliff and his sister, Nancy, were the only brother and sister pair to ever be ranked #1 in the United States!
Richey becomes a great player but suffers in his personal life.
The book traces his development as a tennis player in an achievement-obsessed, driven, close-knit, and loving but somewhat isolated and paranoid family atmosphere. The overlying theme of the book is Cliff’s ongoing and growing battle with depression. He notes his family background of mental disorder and describes in horrific detail the thoughts and feelings he had as he competed as a world-class tennis player while slipping inexorably into a nightmare of anxiety, self-absorption, self-loathing, and despair. He details the appalling effects his illness had on his family and on the other people around him. It provides a stark example of the chasm that can exist between celebrity/apparent success and happiness.
I spent time with Cliff on the tour but knew nothing of his personal problems.
The book is particularly interesting to me because I was on the tour with Cliff in the 1960’s and considered him to be a friend, not bosom-buddies, but a bright and funny guy who I always enjoyed spending a bit of time with. In those days the tour was a close group – a little fraternity of players – who played most of the same tournaments, practiced together, and shared experiences. We were all friends. At the time I was older and on the downswing of my tennis career (such as it was in the pre-open era) while Cliff, seven years younger, was on the upswing of his. In 1966 we even travelled together to South America on the Davis Cup team and to Australia for tournaments. Yet I had no idea that Cliff had these tortured mental issues or that he viewed his fellow competitors more as potential enemies than friends.
Maybe I should have suspected this when I was scheduled to play him in the second round of the US Open, as I recall, in about 1970. I had been off the tour for a couple of years due to a chronic hip injury. I was only playing part-time and was not really a competitive threat to Cliff, at least in my mind. The evening before our match we both happened to be leaving the West Side Tennis Club at the same time returning to our hotel. In those days we took the subway back to Manhattan (the West Side Club was on Long Island), and the station was a few blocks away at the other side of the little town of Forest Hills. As we left the club I was looking forward to a pleasant walk, a chat, and a few laughs with my old friend, of whom I hadn’t seen much since I left the tour. Instead, Cliff crossed to the other side of the street and wouldn’t speak to me. This was a hint. I just thought it was funny (ha, ha funny) and put it down to Cliff being a bit of an over-the-top competitor.
Cliff is extraordinarily smart, driven, and funny.
Although Cliff had never even graduated from high school, I liked him a lot because he was obviously very smart and had a bizarre sense of humor. In those days much of the charm of the tour was the players themselves, and we particularly appreciated the odd characters, of which there were many and Cliff was one. The major objective was to have fun, and we didn’t take the idiosyncrasies too seriously. We used them for the laughs, and we all played into them somewhat. Everyone had nicknames. Cliff was “the Bull” because of his single-minded, tenacious, ferocious competitiveness. I was “the Commander (of the space patrol)” the Aussies claimed because of my scientific take on everything. In fact no one was ever called by their given names. John Newcombe was “Newk,” Tony Roche was “Rochie,” Ken Rosewall was “Muscles,” Pancho Gonzales was “Gorgo,” Rod Laver was “Rocket,” Chuck McKinley was “Stump,” etc. So I thought “the Bull” was just playing into his tour persona when he walked across the street before our match at Forest Hills. It wasn’t until I read his book that I realized that I actually was the enemy. I thought he was kidding!
Cliff’s superior intelligence comes out in his book in his constant use of tennis analogies to highlight his points about depression. (I say this because as a general rule in making meaningful analogies it’s necessary to have a broad perspective in order to identify common characteristics.) Cliff continually compares his strategies in fighting depression to his strategies in winning tennis matches. He is very analytic. He describes exactly the mental qualities that made him a superior tennis player – how he practiced, how he developed a better serve, how he adapted his strategies against certain players to turn losses into wins, and how he could stick with an idea for solving a problem even if there was no improvement in the short term – and applied them to fighting and beating depression.
We learn a great deal about depression and its cures.
Cliff also gives us useful information about the relationship of depression to obsessive-compulsive personality characteristics, anxiety, and stress. He talks about how depression starts gradually and how significant changes in one’s life can make it accelerate. He goes into detail about therapies – counseling and drugs – and tells what it feels like to take various anti-depressants and receive counseling and how well each of them works. And it is all interspersed with fascinating stories about big matches and life on the tennis tour – just a great read.
ANDY RODDICK’S TRANSITION GAME HELPS HIM WIN
Andy Roddick worked his way to an excellent win over Rafael Nadal in the semi-final at the Sony Ericcson Open in Miami (and ultimately won the tournament) using a very effective mixture of big serves, effective ground-strokes, and volleys. Roddick has matured as a player. A few years ago he won solely by hitting big serves and big forehands. Under Gilbert he began working to add a volley to his arsenal, but at first it probably did him as much harm as good. It took awhile for him to become adept at when and how to use it, and now he finally has.
In particular, Roddick would have almost certainly lost the Nadal match without his volley. If Roddick had allowed Nadal to hit his serve return back anywhere in the court and then tried to beat him in strictly baseline to baseline rallies he would have been hugely disadvantaged. Nadal is faster than Roddick (even with Roddick’s new, slimmed-down physique), steadier than Roddick, and has better ground-strokes off of both sides. Roddick would have had to hit an awful lot of aces to win. But his volley has now changed the equation.
Nadal’s serve return has not been known as his best shot, but by following his serve to net from time to time Roddick made Nadal’s job of returning vastly more difficult. When returning against a player on the baseline, the objective is to hit it as deep as possible. In contrast, against a serve and volley player the objective is to hit the return short and low. If you hit the return short and low against the good baseliner you get hurt, and if you hit the high and deep one against the volleyer, you also get hurt. The problem for the receiver is that he must choose one or the other in advance since there isn’t time to change his mind once the serve is in play. It forces the receiver to make decisions (which is always an added difficulty) and keep him from getting any true rhythm or consistency on his return. And the server gets easy points whenever the receiver chooses the wrong return.
The volley has been reemerging in recent years.
Over the years the game has evolved many times into many different forms. And it seems to be evolving yet again. The volley is beginning to reappear and assume, at the highest levels of the game, increasing importance. But it is not the volley of yesteryear, that of McEnroe, Edberg, Rafter, or even Henman. Their volleys were of the constant chip and charge, serve and volley variety, usually requiring a maneuvering volley or two before finishing the point. By contrast, the new volley is a transition volley, hit after a severe groundstroke or serve has forced the opponent off balance and onto the defense. It is opportunistic rather than continual. The volleyer darts forward when he or she senses that the reply from a surprised or out-of-position opponent will be hit softly, high, or inaccurately. Instead of multiple volleys, the point is usually ended with the first volley or, at most, the second.
Roger Federer is good at the transition volley.
These days, Roger Federer is the most obvious practitioner of this type of transition volley. Although adept at the net and quite capable of mounting an old-style serve and volley attack, he rarely does it. Instead, he serves and volleys sporadically, just enough to keep his opponent guessing and insecure about hitting low-risk, deep, floating returns. The rest of the time he tries to get control of the point with his ground-strokes and looks to pick off high replies from opponents chased into the distant corners of the court. His tremendous speed of foot and flexible hands allow him to make his moves suddenly and with deadly efficiency, deftly controlling the occasional difficult volley forced by an opponent who hits a better shot than anticipated.
The other players who make constant use of this type of volley are Justine Henin, David Nalbandian, Fabrice Santoro, and now, on occasion, even Rafael Nadal. The best of them are always on the lookout to jump an unwary opponent with a sudden net attack. Santoro, in fact, virtually makes his living this way. If you took away his transition volley and forced him to stay back and simply slug it out with the horde of heavy-hitting baseliners populating the ATP top 100, he would have been driven off the pro circuit early rather than being able to play into his dotage. It is, I believe, the volley that will separate more and more of the strong baseliners from the pack. Every top player hits the ground-strokes pretty well. At the very top of the game, particularly on the faster surfaces, the players need something extra. And they are starting to recognize this.
The transition volley is effective on the opponent’s reaching backhand.
This play works particularly well on an opponent’s backhand side – especially if the shot is a two-hander. When stretched wide and off balance, a player will often be forced to hit with one hand, a physically weaker shot, and one that generally necessitates a defensive, sliced return. But even players with strong, one-handed backhands will resort to the defensive slice if forced severely. And with the ball moving slower and higher over the net (in an attempt to maintain depth), the best percentage play for hitting a winner is to take the ball in the air. This reduces the opponent’s recovery time and puts one in position for an easy kill, even if the first volley is not conclusive. The alternative is to allow the ball to sail back to the baseline, giving the opponent more time to get back into the court, and to go for a winner with a groundstroke. Because of time and distance considerations, this shot must be hit very hard and close to the lines, imposing greater risk of error.
The threat of the volley produces errors.
A secondary benefit of the transition volley is that it will cause one’s opponent to make more errors. Opponents get jumpy when surprise volleys preclude them from hitting low-risk, defensive returns and regaining proper court position. They are now forced to hit more severe and perilous shots from awkward positions. This factor also operates as a result of the occasional serve and volley. They no longer dare to hit the soft, deep, chip return off the big serve lest it be intercepted in the air. Now they have to hit with less margin against a fast-moving ball that is difficult to control in the best of circumstances. The result – more serve return errors.
Today’s players don’t chip and charge.
One might question why Federer and the others have opted to give up on the old serve and volley, chip and charge type of volley and replace it with the new transition volley? The answer, of course, lies with today’s more powerful and accurate ground-strokes, heavier balls, and slower courts. In order to profitably attack at the net these days, one must come forward behind heavier artillery than in days of yore. (In fact, in the old days of sliced backhands, fast courts, and light balls, one almost had an engraved invitation to come to net.) Now the serve returns and passing shots are hit too hard and too accurately for players to venture forward other than behind substantial heat. If today’s top players are allowed to remain on balance and given time to set up and hit passing shots, the odds appear to be against even the most proficient volleyers, with the possible exception of matches played on grass.
Tennis evolution:
Tennis is constantly evolving as players come up with bright ideas of ways to in response Tennis, in its early years, was a game played primarily from the baseline with relatively flat or sliced groundstrokes. In the 1940’s Jack Kramer discovered that the persistent volleyer had the advantage on fast courts against this type of player. Hence the serve and volleyers dominated the game for the next 25 years. To counter the volleyers, players developed topspin ground-strokes while, at the same time, the courts were slowed down and the balls made heavier. By the mid-1970’s, Borg, Connors, Vilas, Solomon, Dibbs, and the rest killed off most of the volleyers. The game was dominated then by baseliners who won largely by attrition, with the exception of Connors, who actually provided a preview of today’s transition volley strategy. The next major development, led by Ivan Lendl, was the aggressive baseliner, who won by attacking from the baseline. And that has been the trend up until today, with most players winning as aggressive baseliners.
Of course there were plenty of exceptions to these trends. John McEnroe and Stephan Edberg were serve and volleyers during the aggressive baseliner phase, Dick Savitt won Wimbledon in 1951 as an aggressive baseliner in the days of the serve and volleyers, and Maurice McLoughlin won by serving and volleying in the 1920’s when the early baseliners ruled. But these people were exceptional in their times, and we are discussing general trends. And the newest general trend appears to be that of the aggressive baseliner additionally armed with the transition volley.
BE AWARE OF THE SERVES YOUR OPPONENT FAVORS
I very much enjoyed watching the first two sets of Clijsters-Henin semi-final at Miami. (I didn’t see the last one.) Two great athletes, great movement, great shot-making, great emotional control. I must admit pulling for Clijsters, no particular offense to Henin, but Clijsters is known to be an exceptionally nice person.
So I was frustrated by one tactical omission that Clijsters made throughout the two sets. She did not adjust her position on serve returns in response to Henin’s favored serves, thus allowing Henin to hurt her over and over with the same serves. In this case, Henin throws the ball up well to her right on her serve, creating a natural slice that trails off towards her opponent’s forehand. Thus her most dangerous serves were to Clijster’s forehand side – wide in the deuce court and down the tee on the backhand side. Of course she was capable of serving to Clijster’s backhand, but the spin of the ball was moving it towards Clijsters rather than away from her, as was the case with serves to the forehand. Clijsters should have been aware of this and moved over further to her right on Henin’s first serve. Clijsters may well have been aware of the dangerous slice serves – even looking out for them - but she didn’t adjust her position physically, and this cost her a great many points.
As a general rule, players have favored serves. And one important consideration you should always have when receiving is to figure out what they are as soon as possible and physically compensate by moving over and covering these serves. You figure out these favored serves by simply keeping track of which way your opponent is hurting you the most. Then you move over to cover and become determined to not be caught reaching on them. On the contrary, you want to hurt your opponent on these serves and force her/him to serve to the less-favored side. You move until you are being hurt equally on both sides. You will also find that your opponent will tend to miss more serves when trying to hit to the less-favored sides.
There are plenty of examples. Pete Sampras favored hitting his second serves up the tee in the backhand court. If an opponent didn’t move over to close this up, he got aced quite a lot. Most lefty’s are especially adept at spinning the ball wide in the backhand court. When receiving serve against them it is sometimes necessary to move over and return from a position partially in the alley in order to force them to serve more down the middle. They may get you occasionally with this serve but they will miss it more often. On the other hand, if you allow them to hurt you with the wide serve they can do this all day with few errors. The trick for the lefty who wants to hurt you with this wide serve is to get good enough hitting up the tee to threaten you and hold you in a more neutral position. Then, on the big point, he/she can hurt you with the high-percentage wide serve to the backhand.
One other way of figuring out what your opponent’s “money” serve is on the ad side is to notice where your opponent hits his/her first serve the first time it is ad out. Usually they will go for the serve they like best. Keep this in the back of your mind for later. They will try to obscure this by moving their serves around, but when it gets to a crucial point late in the set, watch out for the one they like.
THE UNCONSCIOUS STRUGGLE BETWEEN AMBITION AND FEAR
This is an excerpt from: “The Winner’s Mind: A Competitor’s Guide to Sports and Business”
*
We all fall victim now and then to the most basic problem of competition, the factor that thwarts most people in their quest for success—the unconscious conflict between the desire for success and the fear of failure. To escape this conflict, we construct various defense mechanisms that reduce our anxieties by clouding our minds. Unfortunately, though they may make us feel better, these defense mechanisms also make us poor competitors.
WHAT ARE DEFENSE MECHANISMS?
Defense mechanisms are unconscious distortions of perception and interpretation that act to protect us from unpalatable facts and fears. Cold reality can sometimes be too unpleasant to bear. Reality may force us to face our own inadequacies and fears, deal with desires and actions that may conflict with our moral upbringings or self-images, or accept stressful conflicts that we cannot resolve. At these times, it is comforting to change things around in our minds so that these conflicts can appear to go away.
REPRESSION AND RATIONALIZATION
Repression is one type of defense mechanism. Here one selectively and conveniently “forgets” facts that are difficult to deal with consciously. Another defense mechanism is called “rationalization.” It is a form of self-delusion that also works unconsciously but involves conveniently rearranging facts rather than forgetting them. Presented with an unpleasant set of facts, we create a more attractive overall picture by restructuring the facts and changing our viewpoints. In the process, we may reduce the importance of some facts while amplifying the importance of others. We don’t simply make up false facts; we just change the emphasis of real ones. Facts that are inconvenient to the picture we want to see may be forgotten, while more convenient ones are brought to center stage. The final picture is designed to make us feel better and/or to reduce conflicts that would remain unresolved if the original (true) picture were kept intact.
WE CAN SEE THEM WORKING
Psychologists usually suspect that defense mechanisms are operating when a person’s actions appear counter-productive—that is, when they carry a person in a direction directly opposed to his or her stated goals. There is a reason for everything. People do not act randomly. We may not know what is motivating a certain behavior, but something is certainly causing it to take one direction over another. The reasons may not be good or productive ones, but they are reasons nevertheless. When this happens, people are usually satisfying some unconscious need that they are unwilling to face and consciously accept.
SELF-DELUSION IN TENNIS
Defense mechanisms are insidious and come in a thousand disguises. When they appear in sports or other areas of competition, they are almost invariably driven by fear. Their hidden purpose is to reduce stress, relieve the individual of responsibility, and lessen the pain of loss. Losing is unpleasant in any case, but it is a lot less unpleasant if we don’t try too hard or it’s not our fault.
In tennis, for example, satisfying these psychological needs causes players to lose lots of matches. Figuratively speaking, most people compete with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. They want to win but know, at some level, that losing will make them unhappy. The harder you try and the more deeply you commit yourself to winning, the more painful it will be if you lose. People fear this pain, and to avoid it, many compete with less than a wholehearted commitment. Instead, they rationalize.
Sue at the club tells herself that she doesn’t care whether she wins or not—that she is just playing for the exercise, the social interactions, the love of the game, the feeling of hitting the occasional great shot, or just a good suntan. She tells herself that winning doesn’t matter. Of course she is lying to herself. Everyone would prefer winning to losing. It may not be practical to pay the emotional or physical price required to win every match, but that doesn’t mean winning would not be more fun than losing. Sue doesn’t want to accept this. Doing so would put her under pressure during the match (which is not much fun, I must admit) and put her at risk of feeling badly if she loses. The price Sue pays for avoiding this unpleasantness is to become a less effective competitor and lose frequently. At the same time, Sue has the niggling feeling that she really would like to win and that she is kidding herself. As a consequence, she inhabits a competitive “gray” world where she doesn’t try too hard to win, but doesn’t feel too bad when she loses (which is often), and doesn’t feel too proud of herself either.
A better alternative would be for Sue to admit to herself that she wants to win but that there are simply some occasions when she is not up to competing with 100 percent intensity. It may be too much work, and she may not be prepared for the pressure and unpleasantness. At such times she will simply not do so. (After all, nobody is holding a gun to her head.) On the other hand, she doesn’t have to lie to herself about her motives either. Facing the truth gives Sue control of the situation. Otherwise, she will forever be passively responding to forces of whose existence she is fatally unaware.
And on those other occasions when she has the stomach for it, she can decide she wants to win and test herself by doing everything in her power (within the rules) to do so. Here she risks feeling badly if she loses, but what the heck, she’ll get over it. And she will greatly improve her results. (Test question: Who has the best chance of winning a long, tough match played on a hot day—the player who says she is playing for the pleasant feeling of hitting the ball hard, or the player who overtly acknowledges that she wants to win the match?)
A COMFORTABLE PATH TO NOWHERE
All of us are sufficiently insecure to run for shelter, if shelter from fear of competitive failure becomes a plausible option. We can replace the uncomfortable obligation to perform with a dose of self-deluding repression and rationalization: “It doesn’t matter; it’s not my day; I was cheated; my foot hurts; etc.” These all make the slide down to failure more pleasant. Unfortunately, this does not take into account the fact that winning is simply more fun than losing, and that lying to oneself is a bad habit to get into. Excuses and rationalizations, be they in sport, business, or anywhere else provide an insidious path to losing.
