It is a long piece; hence I decided to break it into two parts.
Almost two weeks ago, we witnessed one of the best Wimbledon finals in the history of the game. I decided to freeze one solitary moment from the entire game to serve as a prologue for this piece.
I am not able to get over that point, much as I try. As Nadal gets ready to serve at 8-7 up, in the fourth-set tiebreaker...I paused and wondered.
With the Wimbledon final, and his entire reign on the line, against Rafa, who started out as a clay specialist and who decimated him at Roland Garros a month ago, with those cold steely eyes, an ever so subtle, but firm flip of the head to the right to pull his hair back, meticulously fiddling his strings, at championship point down...what is Rodge thinking?
What is he thinking right now, at this solitary moment frozen in time?
After a million options that fleeted though my mind, finally I arrived at a very rationalistic and an ever so lucid conclusion.
What is Rodge thinking right now at this moment? Nothing, his mind is blank. He is so in his zone that the only thing that he could possibly be thinking is about that next yellow, round ball that flies his way and how to thread it past Nadal, which he did with exemplary elegance.
That’s how you save championship points in a Wimbledon final...by pulling out an out-of-court backhand down the line. That’s Roger Federer’s Psychology of Winning: being ice cold at the points where a mere mortal’s mind would tend towards maximum entropy (commotion, chaos, panic and confusion).
Highly successful athletes have their very idiosyncratic manner of dealing with, thinking about, and rationalizing situations. On a tennis court, you cannot tell whether Bjorn Borg is ecstatic or devastated. Those stern eyes gave nothing away. He well and truly belongs to the Federer theme, or the other way around supposedly.
Boris Becker’s theme was pure, unrestrained intimidation. He walked the center court like he owned every blade of the hallowed turf. Same with Vivian Richards, when he walked in to face a bowler, the swagger in the very manner he walked to the batting crease was intimidating (very similar to the Jack Nicholson walk).
The psychology was simple: This is MY court or MY home you are treading on. I own it, and you are, at best, a guest. Both did not say much. It was unrestrained, silent intimidation.
Today's Must Reads
Sampras was a variant of the above. He was innately more humble, hence he felt artificial to behave like a Becker or Richards. As much as his long-time coach Paul Annacone tried, Sampras felt if he did that, he would be misrepresenting himself. His psychology was hinged on being low-key; he wanted to fly under the radar.
It is based on the theory that if the opponent does not even know what you are thinking, it will render the opponent more nervous. Sampras also believed that when you see Becker with the swagger on the other side of the court, it made you want to beat him more, so Sampras, by being himself, took that out of the equation.
He still preferred to let the opponents know, "I am Pete Sampras and you are not", but in a much more under the radar manner. A stark contrast to the silent or under the radar intimidation was the verbal intimidation.
Shane Warne and Allan Border adopted and embraced this psychology. Both of them believed that if something is not working, or if you are flat on a given day, pick a meaningless fight or an argument with the opponent to get you going. They both also never held back and told the opponents exactly what they thought of them, with enormous success (ask Daryl Cullinan).
One of my most favorite cricketers is Kevin Pietersen, for this attitude, the sheer energy he brings to the field, and his absolutely positive body language. Kevin is a variant of the verbal intimidation, in the fact that he does not chit-chat on the field to get himself going, but he just chit-chats, period.
His psychology is the positive body language and the all guns blazing, "Let’s go take 'em on" or the "Bring on the Aussie Boys" theme (how can I ever forget the manner in which he walked out to take the Aussie boys in his debut test at Lords...vintage Kevin). To a certain extent, Greame Smith and Wayne Rooney belong to the school of thought, too.
Tendulkar’s psychology is the exact contrast to the former. I liken Tendulkar to Sampras; they both know that they are better than anyone else on the pitch or court, and they don’t feel the need to make an open statement.
All Tendulkar needs to do, in a given day, is to rock up to the ground, and chances are he will score in abundance.
They still have very interesting quirks that have flat-out annoyed opponents at some point of time: Sampras’ hangdog (tongue) and "I am so tired" approach on the court has many a times sent Courier over the edge. Roland Garros, fifth set at 4-4 in 1995 quarters, where Courier got a verbal warming for saying, "The guy ****in looks like he is in his grave, and he is serving bullets at me, 194 miles ****in bullets at me."
Tendulkar’s grin, looking dead at the pitch, has been perceived by many bowlers as him laughing at them. Quite the contrary to what he intended to do, and he couldn’t care less, I am sure. The psychology is the same, though. "I am Tendulkar, I am good and I know that. I don’t need to worry about who you are. I don’t need to indulge in any form of mind games. Let's play and we’ll see how the cards unfold."
He is as close to a saint as you would come across on a sporting field Eventually, we need to get to this one, the pantomime villainous psychology that evokes bipolar opinions more than any other category. The "Me against the World" psychology.
Jimmy Connors and Lleyton Hewitt are the very quintessence of such a theme. Both of them play best when you write them off, when they have a chip on their shoulder, and when they have somebody to prove wrong.
It’s an extreme extension of the verbal intimidation (Warne and Border) discussed above. Connors and Hewitt don’t only pick an argument (with the chair umpire for instance) on a flat day; they pick an argument to enable themselves to play better, day in and day out.
A game so innately, intensely fueled by rage and contentiousness on court, it is unsurprising that Hewitt’s career at the top was compendious; there is only such a finite time one can invest such an insane amount of energy to succeed.
I intentionally did not include John McEnroe in this category because, unlike Hewitt and Connors, McEnroe does not get into arguments for a reason. He did that because that is very inherently himself.
To be continued in "The Psychology of Winning: Part Two".
comments (4) write a comment »
write a new comment
about 1 month ago
excellent assessment of champions' psychology. both sampras and tendulkar were/are a combination of power, grace, finesse and humility. both these men represent/represented everything good in their respective sport.
vijay, kerala
from about 1 month ago
thanks Vijay - appreciate the comment
i must say though, just because Hewitt and Warne are more aggressive - it does mean they are bad
but i do see your perspective
thanks
about 1 month ago
They say hit the nail on the head. u did that convincingly and pleasingly.
Sampras and Tendulkar they both carried themselves in a way which brought grace to their game.
Mcenroe warne and lara got a different charm to their respective game.
every character is equally imporatant as we go to watch a game between men not machines.
about 1 month ago
'every character is equally imporatant as we go to watch a game between men not machines'
am gonna become your fan - for this one sentence rama
take care
write a new comment