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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  The pressure of competition, and the lack of it
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The pressure of competition, and the lack of it

The pressure of competition is what hones your gamea lesson every serious sportsman learns early

Photo: iStockPremium
Photo: iStock

One of my favourite stories about my personal history with sports is from my third year in college. There was a tennis-ball cricket tournament coming up, and groups from all over the campus were forming teams to participate. My wing in the hostel was no exception.

There were 12 of us in that wing. I didn’t make the team.

It’s something I laugh at now, but at the time I was pretty frustrated and depressed. Like nearly every young man around me, I had illusions about my prowess as a cricketer: I could bowl fast, I could bowl some mean leg spin, and didn’t Gary Sobers do both those things with some serious success? Yet here was the reality check about my abilities: when we had to choose 11 players out of the 12 of us, I was the 12th man. If I was surprised, none of my wingmates were. They knew exactly how well I played the game.

Those years, it was the story of my life in whatever sport I tried my hand at, and I tried a whole lot. Whenever I thought I had got to some kind of level with my skills, the reality of competition brought me firmly back to earth.

Squash? I could hit the ball cleanly and hard, and I was pretty quick darting around the court. But when I played a game with someone, meaning with actual points, I’d lose easily.

Badminton? I had played for years and really thought I wasn’t bad. Then there was the time someone from my hostel team couldn’t play a representative match and the captain asked me to fill in. I got crushed so badly I wince even today.

Chess? I read chess books, played out games, thought through the moves and their explanations. Then I entered a tournament and within minutes in my first game, my opponent had me in terminal trouble.

Cycling? With buddies on our bikes, I had zipped all over town, up and down hills too. But when I entered the 1500m race on my school sports day, I came dead last. Even the classmate who fell off his bike in the first lap came back to overtake me.

So it went, every time. I realize today that nearly anyone who plays a sport competitively must start with failure. You have to push through and persist, and then the successes come. One competitive outing tells you nothing about yourself except that you should play another. But at the time, I didn’t understand. So with each dismal showing, I sank into an ever deeper funk about my sporting abilities. I couldn’t understand why my liking for these sports, or even such skills as I thought I had, just would not translate into performance.

It left me with a permanent wariness about entering tournaments. I just didn’t have it in me to win, I decided, so why take part at all? In all the years since, I have never again signed up for a tournament, in any sport. I make my excuses, I pretend I’m really playing for the exercise. But inside, I know.

This would be ok, really. I have enough else going on in my life that I don’t much regret lost chances at Olympic or Wimbledon glory. But by now, I also know the effect this entire attitude has had on the way I play.

Take tennis. I love the game, I have some good strokes, I’m not particularly consistent with them, but I’m confident I can hit at least a bit with nearly anyone. But get this: In all these years of playing, I have never had a reliable serve. Oh yes, I’ve looked at videos, tried to imitate various champions — Kevin Curren, Stefan Edberg, Roger Federer, Pat Rafter — done the visualization thing, once even spent three weeks going by myself to a court for two hours every single day and practicing only my serve, nothing else. I’ve read magazines, got help online, asked for advice from coaches, from partners, from a nephew who was a highly ranked junior player.

None of which helped me develop my serve to even a passable level. So when I have to serve, I start my motion with the belief that the ball is going to end in the net, or sail past the end of the court, or maybe I’ll miss it altogether. And when I believe such things will happen, they have a curious way of, well, happening. So much so that I’m now actually slightly frightened of agreeing to play a set with a partner. For what if I serve only double faults? And of course, if I’m asking that question as I serve, the double faults happen, non-stop.

And I know now why I’m like this: because I never chose to subject my serve — and all of my game, of course — to the pressure of competition. Doing that, I know now, would have fashioned and sharpened an edge in my game that it noticeably lacks. It’s a lesson that serious sportsmen — and even amateurs — learn early in their lives. It’s taken me longer, but at least I’ve learned it now.

All this introspection, because I’m now on an enforced absence from tennis, or indeed any sport at all. The reason? Recent surgery on my knee, to repair a torn ligament. So the time has come to think of many things, tennis prominent among them. And to make this resolution: when I do return to the court, I will play the game competitively every chance I get.

For after all, the best way to learn not to serve double faults is to, indeed, serve lots of them. That’s what I intend to do.

Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Dance.

His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun

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Published: 25 Feb 2017, 11:51 PM IST
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