I just spent the past couple weeks watching Wimbledon tennis matches and I’m in such awe of that kind of athletic ability. But the thing that struck me most was how much mental strength it takes to win a tournament like that. Clearly a world champion has to not only have the athletic ability and the knowledge of strategy, but they also need to have the kind of mental toughness that doesn’t come easy to us common folk.
Watching some of the men’s matches, I witnessed so many examples of how quickly the game can shift…all because something bad got into the mind of a player. You’d see them cursing themselves over a mistake, and then sure enough they’d start to spiral downhill and lose control of the game. In the championship match with Nadal and Djokovic, Djokovic dominated in the first two sets. It was rare to see Nadal being pushed around the courts like that, and Djokovic was surely tasting his first Wimbledon win. But things turned completely around in the third set and you could just see that Djokovic’s frustration was affecting his performance. After losing so badly in that third set, he rallied back to eventually win the match and I wondered how he turned it around in his head. What do players say to themselves to get themselves out of the mud?
I think part of the reason why I love Roger Federer so much is his lack of emotion on the courts. He plays as though he’s only concentrating on the game, and you never see him throwing his racquet with disgust or verbally abusing himself after a failed shot. It’s got to be hard not to show frustration during a competition, but he’s mastered the emotionless calm while playing, even when playing poorly. When he’s down, you’ll mostly see him egging himself on after a winning shot. Is that why he’s been number one for all those years? The ability to keep his mental game ahead of his physical game? Is that what it takes more so than fitness? I’m sure it’s a combination of many things, but in tennis especially you can actually see how a sudden shift in a player’s mental focus can lead them in the opposite direction. And I probably can’t say this for sure without being as fit as those athletes, but I bet that kind of mental fortitude is harder to obtain than the fitness.
