Monday 11 April 2011

It's All In Your Head

By Kris Tait

As millions of us witnessed the sad meltdown of Rory McIlroy last night, the headlines this morning told a miserable story. The Irish Times wrote: "McIlroy slips from master to bogey man on final day", while the Belfast-based newspaper News Letter simply put it: "Horror Show." But what happened to the man that was the best player on the 3 days previous?
 
In my book, there is absolutely no debate that players performance is affected by what goes on in the grey matter in our head. As anxiety begins to creep in then our performance in sport begins to deteriorate. ‘Mental Strength’ is obviously an enormous part of becoming an elite athlete in your chosen discipline, and as former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans says: “You lose your head and your ass goes with it,” That being said, anxiety isn’t always a bad thing, many athletes would argue that if you’re not feeling a little nervous before a match your performance can suffer. The relationship between anxiety and performance can be described as curvilinear (i.e., as anxiety increases, performance increases to a point then begins to decrease as anxiety continues to increase).
 
Competitive situations can cause athletes to react both physically (somatic) and mentally (cognitive) in a manner that can negatively affect their performance. The major battle in sport is training your mind not to hinder, but to become a part of your success. With major sporting events such as the Superbowl, the football World Cup or the World Series in baseball it is no surprise that athletes now look to sports psychologists to help them become more mentally tough in sport.
 
If we look into the two above effects on player’s performance we can begin to piece together McIlroy’s great demise yesterday. From the first green he looked tense and after missing a five-foot par putt he dropped an early shot. This tension could be the result of some ‘Somatic Anxiety’, which refers to physical changes in the body that occur when a person experiences anxiety (http://bit.ly/gV1vqq). Tension in his arms while over the ball, an increased heart rate on the tee or butterflies in the stomach could have all attributed to him getting off to a somewhat shaky start. Lee Westwood’s comments after the final round backed up this theory by saying: “I have played with Rory a lot, when he gets under a bit of pressure he does have a pull hook in his bag." If a player doesn’t have the mental strength to compete in the biggest occasions he can quickly become a foe to somatic anxiety.
 
In McIlroy's interview with Sky Sports afterwards he was asked what went wrong and replied with: "I can't really put my finger on what went wrong. I lost a lot of confidence with my putting, but I just hit a poor tee shot on 10 and sort of unraveled from there.” He also said on the BBC: “I began to second guess the speed of putts and I was second guessing lines by the end of it”. Both of these comments show a sign of cognitive anxiety, which is defined as the mental component of anxiety. It is caused by negative expectations about success or by negative self-evaluation. In other words, cognitive anxiety is the fear of failure (http://bit.ly/iklnWQ). Factors such as indecision, negative thoughts, poor concentration, irritability, loss of confidence, images of failure or even feeling rushed are all common signs of cognitive anxiety.
 
McIlroy's great demise was complete after he hit his tee shot left on hole 13 he said: “After I hit my tee shot into the stream at 13, I knew it was over”. His confidence was shattered and it’s safe to say he had lost his head and any hopes of becoming the second youngest ever winner of the famous green jacket.
 
In my opinion this isn’t something that is going to continue to happen to Rory. He has a huge amount of talent and he will definitely have the opportunity to win a Major again, I dare say within the next year. This time around however pressure got to him, but like any sport the experience will go a long way to helping him cross the finish line the next time. As McIlroy (@McIlroyRory) put it wonderfully in a tweet afterwards: “Well that wasn't the plan! Found it tough going today, but you have to lose before you can win. This day will make me stronger in the end.
 
For me, sport is about experiences and you inevitably improve as you become more experienced. To be an elite athlete it takes a hell of a lot of talent. But the difference between winning and losing? It’s all in your head.

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