Stepping Through and Impeccability
The most telling characteristic
of a warrior is the perennial search for impeccability in every
action, even the smallest. The warrior understands impeccability
as giving the best in everything he or she does, which implies
optimum use of individual energy.
-The Teachings of Don Carlos,
Victor Sanchez
By Kim Shanley
To The TennisONE Community
From challenger to champion, from bravado to bravura, from playing
out of his mind to playing within himself, Andy Roddick stepped
through at this year's US Open. But Roddick wasn't the only
one who stepped through this year. Juan Carlos Ferrero (French
Open) and Roger Federer (Wimbledon) both won their first Grand
Slam titles, and Justine Henin-Hardenne won her first at the
French, and then added another at the US Open. If tennis, like
wine, can have a vintage year, then perhaps tennis connoisseurs
will look back at this year, sniff nostalgically, and pronounce
2003 a great year.
But how did Roddick, Ferrero, Federer, and Henin-Hardenne
do it? How did they step through to another level? I say they
discovered impeccability. The dictionary defines impeccability
as: faultless, immaculate, irreproachable, stainless, perfect,
consummate, flawless. But who defines impeccability in sports?
Agassi sprinting up the hill behind his Las Vegas house on Christmas
Eve and puking his guts out, has it. Serena Williams has it and
Venus Williams gained another measure of it serving with a torn
stomach muscle at this year's Wimbledon final. Ivan Lendl, 8-time
US Open finalist, who every time the US Open courts were resurfaced
would hire the same contractors to resurface his home practice
court, had it. Larry Byrd, wiping the bottom of his basketball
shoes after every time-out, had it. Jerry Rice, 40 years old
and the all-time NFL receiver, trains in the pre-season by scrambling
straight up a 2.6 mile dirt trail, sometimes on his hands and
knees, has an inexhaustible supply of it. Lance Armstrong, having
endured a nightmarish regimen of chemo-therapy to conquer what
was thought to be a terminal case of testicular cancer, rides
and films the most difficult stages of the 2,290 mile Tour de
France in preparation for the race. He has now won the Tour
de France five consecutive times, making the Yellow Jersey his
personal symbol of impeccability.
What is impeccability? For a further definition we must look
to the great coaches, great athletes, and perhaps even a few
great mystics. John Wooden, who coached his UCLA basketball
teams to seven consecutive NCAA championships, and 10 championships
out of 12 years, built impeccability into the tiniest detail
of his coaching. "I believe in the basics: attention to,
and perfection of, tiny details that might commonly be overlooked. For
example, at the first squad meeting each season I personally
demonstrated how I wanted players to put on their socks each
and every time." Was Wooden the ultimate control freak?
No, he was injecting his young players with their first inoculation
of impeccability. "Since there was a way to reduce blisters,
something the player and I could control, it was our responsibility
to do it. Otherwise we would not be doing everything possible
to prepare in the best way."
Controlling what you can control, then letting go the rest,
is a fundamental tenet of impeccability. But what is letting
go of the rest entail? The rest is a whole bunch of stuff,
like attachment to winning and losing. Here, the reader might
reasonably object: I could see how you could become attached
to winning, as that feels good. But how can someone become attached
to losing? Easy, feel really bad about losing, tell yourself
that you're a loser or a choker, that you'll never be as good
as you think you could become. Do any of those, and you've attached
your ego and self-definition to a game where someone scored more
points than you. Says the Wizard of Westwood, "Long before
any championships were won at UCLA, I came to understand that
losing is only temporary and not all-encompassing. You must
simply study it, learn from it, and try hard not to lose the
same way again. Then you must have the self-control to forget
about it."
Jeff Greenwald, the 2002 number one ranked singles and doubles
player in the men's 35 division, and now a top sports psychologist
(also a TennisONE contributor), teaches the paradoxical wisdom
of embracing losing ("Loneliness
to Fearlessness"): "The answer, from my perspective,
as I continue to learn day after day, resides in our courage
to stare at this bogie man in the face. When we accept losing
as a possibility, embrace the tension between its brother, winning,
without hiding, protecting, fearing, and shrinking from the moment
before us, we will be free."
Okay, you might be saying, save your breath, you don't
have to convince me any more. Losing feels bad. I can dump
my attachment to losing anytime. But winning feels good. What's
wrong with becoming attached to winning? Because it is has
the same spiritually corrosive effect as the attachment to losing.
Feeling good about winning a game is only natural and right,
as long as winning doesn't swell the head and ego. Your ego
is the needy, greedy part of you, the one that has an insatiable
sweet tooth for the kind of praise and recognition our society
lavishes on those it anoints winners. The Bhagavad Gita,
the ancient Indian guide to self-mastery, counsels we must "renounce
the fruits of action." Gita translator and commentator
Eknath Easwaran says fruits mean outcome, and what the Gita
means is that you should "give up attachment to the results
of what you do; that is, to give your best to every undertaking
without insisting that the results work out the way you want….You
have the right to action, but not the fruits of action."
Here we arrive at one of the central mysteries and paradoxes
of sport. To win, especially at the championship level, you
must have a great desire to win. But if you care too much about
winning, especially the ego satisfactions of winning, you'll
often try too hard, which undermines your chances of winning.
What is the answer to this paradox? Impeccability.
Although he doesn't use the term, Tim Gallwey, in his second
tennis book, Inner Game, writes profoundly about winning
and impeccability. Players may say they are 100% devoted to
winning, Gallwey says. But if you look objectively at the game
these 100 percenters play, you often see that only 75% of their
energies are focused on winning. The other 25% is focused on
the ego satisfactions of hitting big, looking good, or not looking
bad. (As an aside, think about why certain players you play
with have poor shot selection or repeatedly go for too much?
Are their energies focused 100% on winning or are they defending
a certain ego-based conception of how they play the game?) At
the highest levels of the professional tennis game, you could
say that 80-90% of the players' energies are focused on winning,
with 10-20% focused on propping up or defending their egos.
When we say Roddick, Ferrero, Federer, and Henin-Hardenne
stepped through this year to play at another level, I believe
we've seen a measurable reallocation of energies towards winning
and away from ego. I don't want to pick on Andy Roddick, whom
I happen to like and admire. But in my last newsletter ("Fast
Andy No Longer"), I pointed out that prior to hooking
up with Brad Gilbert, Roddick seemed to be carrying the excessive
weight of living up to a media-appointed role of entertaining
as well as winning. On court, he threw away precious energy
laughing, fist-pumping, glaring, and joking to dramatize to the
crowd how Andy was feeling. But Gilbert got Roddick to cut the
crap and focus all his energies on sustaining focus on a game
plan and executing on each and every point. And by the time
Roddick met Ferrero in the US Open final, Roddick, hat pulled
down tight over his eyes and absolutely not communicating to
the crowd, stepped through to the first rung of impeccability
and won his first Grand Slam title.
If impeccability is one key (let's not overlook talent, for
another) to stepping through at the top levels of the professional
game, we should be able to see who is demonstrating impeccability
and is about to step through to the next level. On the men's
tour, perhaps Coria, Schuettler, Srichaphan, or even Marty Fish?
On the women's side, Clijsters looked close this summer, but
almost all the other leading challengers (Davenport, Capriati,
Mauresmo, and Dementieva) seem to be drifting in the opposite
direction of impeccability.
But let's not end on a note of idle speculation about how
much more impeccable the top pros could be. How many of us want
to get to another level, whether in tennis or life? So along
with all the other positive mental tips you carry in your head,
like "make it a great day," or "bounce and hit,"
carry one more around, "impeccable."
As always, I would love to hear your views on the subjects
raised in this newsletter. Please click
here to send your email directly to me.
Kim Shanley
President, TennisONE
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October
1, 2003