Two years ago, I sat in the stands during a first-round match of the US Open tennis tournament, and I watched the systematic self-destruction of a player who was on the verge of pulling off a great upset.
The 1998 match pitted a little-known Moroccan player named Hicham Arazi against Patrick Rafter, the defending champion. Arazi had been on fire since the start of the match; and with a two sets-to-love lead, everything seemed to be going his way. Indeed, despite intense preparation for the match, Rafter seemed unnerved by the strong play of his young opponent.
When Arazi broke Rafter’s serve at the start of the third set, the late-night crowd started to head for the exits. A few games later, Arazi earned another break point with a screaming backhand down the line. If he won the next point, he would be serving with a 4-1 lead in the third set; it looked as if Rafter were going to be the first defending champion in US Open history to lose in the first round.
On the next point, however, everything changed. Rafter hit a weak second serve and followed it into the net. Arazi took full advantage and hit a vicious return at Rafter’s feet. Rafter was just barely able to weakly half-volley the ball back. It was a floater that landed in the service box. It was a set-up. A gimme. And Arazi came in strong. Rafter had no choice but to close in on the net as quickly as possible, but he clearly was a sitting duck. Arazi had an almost unlimited number of options, and he chose to hit a pseudo-overhead.
Interestingly, because the outcome of the match seemed fairly clear, I had been watching the last few games through a pair of binoculars. The circumference of the view only allowed me to focus on one player at a time, so I happened to be watching Arazi “up-close-and-personal” as he played that last point.
Just before he played the pseudo-overhead, I saw in his face something that I thought I recognized: I saw him realize that he was going to beat the number two player in the world in the US Open. I saw happiness. The problem, of course, was that he realized it just before he executed the stroke. And, in that instant, he lost his focus, and he hit the ball long.
Strangely, in that same moment of time, I suddenly knew how the rest of the match was going to unfold. I remember telling my friends who were with me that Arazi was going to lose this game with at least one unforced error, he was going to lose his temper with the umpire or a linesman within two games, and he was going to lose set, halfheartedly try in the fourth, and lose decisively in the fifth. My friends asked me to explain, and I couldn’t quite do it. But I was sure I was right.
Over the course of the next hour, as my prediction slowly became true, I remember trying hard to understand the substance behind my instinct. Much of it stemmed, I think, from seeing Arazi’s face just after he hit the ball long. For the first time in the match, he was suddenly afraid. He was still in a commanding position, but he suddenly allowed himself to consider that he might lose despite having a big lead. He might choke.
Fear itself is not a killer, but how one deals with it can be, and the fear of choking is huge. No one wants the label. No one wants to be weak.
In fact, the desire to protect oneself from being weaker than one’s opponent can be strong enough to cause two bizarre actions for a competitor. The first is getting mad at someone else. It is almost always self-destructive and leads to a lower quality of play (John McEnroe notwithstanding), but it also allows us to rationalize a loss (“If it hadn’t been for that terrible call…”).
The second is even more peculiar: outright tanking. Effectively quitting during a matching is strange because tanking necessarily means you are going to lose, so it seems completely irrational. But if we tank, we allow ourselves to believe that we weren’t necessarily weaker than our opponent; we just weren’t trying. It is a monstrous form of self-deception.
Interestingly, we – as spectators – instinctively love those who have a cure for all this (despite the fact that each has admitted to feeling fear in competition), for the cure is as simple as it can be: hustle for everything. Never stop trying. Never give up. Do the names Jimmy Connors, Michael Jordan or Pete Rose mean anything? Or how about Patrick Rafter? He must have learned something from Hicham Arazi – after all, he won his second consecutive US Open title five matches later.
