MINDSET
Management BY PAUL BARRS
Watching some tennis recently I found it compelling viewing as one of the up-and-coming young players began to chop away at a more experienced veteran and former world number one player half way through the match.
He was just one point away from claiming a vital set that would have put him in the driver’s seat. Instead, he lost the next three service points with double faults and lost the next eight points, all in a row.
As they came to a headway, the younger player seemed to be more at ease than his rival and was leading, with three set-points to his advantage.
He lost the set and went on to lose the match.
If you know anything about tennis, then you’ll know that coming back from three set-points down is extremely difficult. But in this case, the older, more experienced former number one had something that the younger player didn’t – The right kind of self-talk.
Did the weather conditions change? No. Did the balls or courts change? No. His racquets’, clothes, water…? No.
Now here’s the thing, I’m only assuming from watching that this is the way it went down; but as the younger player held the opportunity to take the set with just one more strike he seemed to ‘freeze up’. In sport, that’s a term for the tightening up of the muscles. From one moment to the next he was loose, flowing and relaxed to not being able to hit a ball in the right direction.
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What went wrong?
Only his mindset. But he’s not the only one who does this. In the sporting world it’s not uncommon to see someone in match-winning form one moment turn to not being able to do a single thing right in just a few moments. It begins when they hit a wall, then, after their first failure to climb that wall, they start to doubt themselves. After a few more failed attempts, all their training seems to count for nought – as everything falls apart. In business, we do it too.
