Yesterday’s Loss Was Due to Nerves
I lost a match yesterday and asked my coach one question: Why?
Our opponents were strong but held no skills that my partner and I couldn’t handle. What happened?
Coach asked me to rate my performance against the ten athletic skills, as defined by ESPN’s Jim Caple Degree of Difficulty Project.
This is how I performed yesterday:
ENDURANCE: 10/10. I never ran out of energy.
STRENGTH: 7/10. I served well, securing a few well-placed aces. Yet midway through the second set, I didn’t feel as strong and confident as I did earlier in the match.
SPEED: 6/10. I remember not accelerating quickly and arriving at some balls off balance. I need to add sprinting drills into my training.
AGILITY: 8/10. I changed direction well throughout the match.
FLEXIBILITY: 9/10. Knees were bending, hips and shoulders swung freely with each stroke.
NERVES: 3/10. This was my weakness yesterday. Nerves as defined by the Degree of Difficulty Project is “the ability to overcome fear.” Bull riding (9.50 out of 10) and diving (8.38) ranked far higher than tennis at 3.0. I might not be riding a bull but I had hesitancy on my second serve when the score was 15-40 and during the tiebreak when our court win meant a team win.
DURABILITY: 10/10. After the long well-played match, I left the court without pain or aches and already thinking of our next match.
HAND-EYE COORDINATION: 8/10. Very few balls skipped past me without a strong return on the strings.
ANALYTIC APTITUDE: 8/10. When receiving a serve or in a rally, I love analyzing the position of my opponent’s body, foot position, and racquet angle to predict their return.
I determined I lost the match because of my inability to stay charged and confident during key points. Coach promised to create stressful situations in our next practice by calling out stressful point scores and improving my calming rituals to stay present with an ideal state of mind.
The purpose of the Degree of Difficulty Project was to determine the toughest sport in the world. Caple had pulled together a panel of sports scientists, academicians in muscles and movement science, an athlete, and journalists to rate the demands a sport places on a player in ten athletic categories. Tennis ranked seventh out of the sixty sports. Boxing and ice hockey were the most difficult; billiards and fishing the least.
As a former college rugby player, I disagree that football (rated #3) is higher rated than rugby (#13), but Coach waved off my comments. “Argue what you want, but use these weighted athletic skills to improve your tennis practice and athlete conditioning.”
She’s right, again.
The full ranking is available at https://www.espn.com/espn/page2/sportSkills.
