I watched Patrick Rafter’s press conference after he lost to Wayne Arthurs in the first round of this year’s French Open, and he looked oddly content. Keep in mind, he was the favorite in the match, and he lost 6-1 in the deciding fifth set. When the interviewer pressed him for reasons, he said simply, “Look, Wayne was just the better player today. He was just too good.”
Unbelievably good sportsmanship, right? Yes, but more. You see, if you can make yourself really believe what Rafter said, you have a secret to why some players rarely have really bad upsets where they beat themselves. Rafter, when he gets beaten by a player ranked below him, seems to lose because the other guy has a career day (let’s leave some of his matches where he played with a clearly injured shoulder out of it). Other top players lose to inferior players when it seems like the favored player just didn’t feel like trying. What is going on?
The problem, I think, is one of wanting to be better than you are. When I decided to commit to the pro tour, I found myself wanting to act like a professional. That meant believing that I was really good – better, even, than I really was. While this is somewhat necessary, one dangerous offshoot is that it can lead to the belief that you shouldn’t have to work too hard against players generally acknowledged to be below your standard.
There was, for me, a period of time when I would go out to play a match against a player who was ranked far below me, and I would be sure I was going to win. Instead, I occasionally found that my opponent had not heard the news that I was supposed to be better, and everything he hit seemed to fall into place. This is where it got interesting.
Falling victim to my own expectations, I was faced with a decision: do I acknowledge that I really have to play and go all out against the lesser opponent and risk losing? Or do I kind of play it cool so that if I lose, it was because I wasn’t really trying? This is less obvious than it sounds.
Let’s look at the consequences: if I play it cool and lose, I can justify the loss as a match where I was “working on something” or where I wasn’t taking it too seriously. Obviously, I was the better player, but there were all these other factors. In other words, little risk to my own ego. In fact, the only real risk is to my ranking and to the perceptions of others about my game.
If, on the other hand, I go for it – I mean I really, really try – against the player I believe to be inferior, well, then, if I lose… it must mean that I was not as good as the other guy. And that is unacceptable. After all, I went into the match thinking I was a few levels above him. If I lose, my entire concept of myself as a player is in great jeopardy.
Notice the fascinating factor here: I am willing to risk a lower ranking and loss of face with my peers and my fans (assuming there are any) to avoid dealing with my own ego. It isn’t that I am trying to justify my own standing as a player to others; it is about my own perceptions of myself as a player.
If you are buying what I am saying, then you will understand how much courage it actually takes to go for it. To put it on the line in the early rounds of a tournament where you are one of the favorites and your opponent is playing like he is the number one seed can take serious guts. If you win, why the heck did you have to work so hard? If you lose, you aren’t really as good as all that, are you?
And so, in an odd way, you talk yourself into losing. That’s not, of course, what you are thinking, but that is what happens. You go in thinking you should win fairly easily, your opponent starts to play well, and you fall a little behind. You think you should be able to make it up easily, but you don’t. So, you start to work on some aspect of your game. After all, if you truly are working on something, then if you lose, you never have to confront the fact that you might have lost even if you had really tried. You don’t tank the match, exactly, but you stop focusing on winning; you have talked yourself into losing.
So what is the way around this quagmire? I have often wondered if there were some easy way to avoid this, but I had decided that the only thing to do was to have the guts to try hard no matter what. And excuses be damned. But under the heading that there is nothing new under the sun, this has long been the Australian credo. Sometimes, the other guy is just too good. This can just be rhetoric, of course, but what if you really let yourself believe it? What if it is okay for the other guy to be better – on that particular day?
The answer is clear: if you let yourself believe that if you try really hard and lose that it is beyond your control, then you are free to go for it no matter what the situation. If you still lose, it’s just that the other guy had a better match. It happens. But you may wind up winning more matches. Kind of an interesting result, isn’t it?
