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Crisis Management:

How to Handle the Pressure

This is the second of several columns analyzing the Do You Think Like a Winner?: Competitors' Questionnaire for measuring the psychological dimension of your tennis game. This column analyzes your score for questions 7-12.

by Jim McLennan, Senior Editor, TennisONE (Former President, USPTA, Northern California), and Carol Blackman

The Crisis Management section of the Competitors' Questionnaire examines how well you handle pressure. To handle pressure situations, you must be able to control your state of tension or nerves and your adrenaline flow-what certain sports psychologists call arousal control.

The classic example of arousal control, of playing calmly when the chips were really down, was Sergei Brugera's performance against two-time defending champion Jim Courier in the 1993 French Open final. In the fifth set, the announcers were concerned that Brugera might be tiring. His body seemed limp and his pace between points was ponderous. Courier, on the other hand, was displaying his usual pumped-up, super-energetic flair about the court. But guess what? It was super-energized, super-aroused Courier, not the apparently dragging Brugera, who made the critical errors during the late stages of the match. Looking back on the match, it was clear that Brugera was relaxing and conserving energy between points; his mastery over himself enabled him to win his first Grand Slam title.

Some insight into Brugera's mastery of his energy and nerves can be found in Dr. Jim Loehr's studies of "arousal control." I had the good fortune of attending Dr. Loehr's seminar in 1990, three years before the Brugera/Courier match.

His seminar was based on experimentation where Loehr had put a heart rate transmitter on a tennis player so he could monitor the heart rate of the player during the practice match, on the changeover, between points, and during points. From this experimentation, Loehr selected an optimal heart rate between points, during changeovers, and during play. The key, he said, was to learn to control your heartbeat and your state of arousal and energy during all aspects of play. Loehr used a feedback device to train the player to either elevate or depress their heart rate when it deviated from the optimal level, and this training gave the player an internal control over their state of arousal. After the seminar Loehr was asked who he had been training in such an unusual manner. His answer was Sergei Brugera.

Peak performance and medium arousal

Scientists depict an inverted "U" on a graph to describe the relationship between arousal and performance.

When a person is underaroused and too relaxed, his performance suffers. Ironically, when a person is too aroused, hyper-alert with the heart beating 150 times per minute, performance will also be very low. For the optimal performance to occur, the player must be in a state of truly "medium" arousal. In this state you feel very clear and focused - without being overly intense. You are neither over-pumped, nor under-pumped, but pumped just right. But just how much is "just right?" And how can you practice to control your adrenaline flow, your internal energy, when you're in a crisis situation.

We all have the ability to play well when we're loose, when nothing causes us to question whether we can hit the ball in. But quite often there is a specific event that upsets the apple cart, that causes us to doubt whether we can place that next backhand or that next second serve accurately into the court. This specific event can be the size and proximity of the gallery, the face and reputation of a difficult opponent, or the score in the third set. Whatever the cause, this event will often cause an over-aroused state that actually hinders performance. But the crisis situation that creates the doubt must be managed. To play well we must be able to perform in the crunch.

Mastering Your Self and Your "Crises"

Two specific strategies can be used to counteract the pressures of these so-called crises. One strategy involves becoming intimately familiar with the situation, so that the familiarity enables you to see that the crisis is in fact readily manageable. The other strategy involves examining your outlook and the way that you interpret the events in your life.

Plan A - Familiarity

To conquer a situation, you must continually face it, again and again. Just as an aversion to snakes is overcome by gradually getting closer and closer to the real thing, the snake, you can never really get over a "crisis" until you have confronted it many, many times. Repeatedly playing in tennis tournaments, for example, will help you learn to deal with pressure more effectively. Another, more practical alternative perhaps, is to create an intense practice situation, where you truly believe and emphasize that the next set you play is the finals of a tournament. When taken seriously, this practice event can become a positive means of mastering your self and your nerves.

Plan B - Redefining your life

Some years ago, a psychotherapist made a bet with Ivan Lendl that if he worked with her, he would win the US Open. Lendl had lost in the finals the last two years, and had something of a reputation as a choker. The psychologist vowed that if Lendl did not win the Open after her psychological intervention, then she would pay him a sum of money. Lendl took the bet, and won the next three US Opens.

She believed that Lendl had created his own pressure in Grand Slam finals, and his poor performance (to that date) was a function of how he viewed these events. Her explanation to him, based on a psychological discipline entitled, "Logotherapy," developed by the famed psychologist, Dr. Victor Frankl, (his most famous book is "Man's Search for Meaning"). Frankl's theory was that events in and of themselves had only the meaning that you give them. She challenged Lendl to redefine his Grand Slam final experience. Lendl had a breakthrough by realizing that in a Grand Slam final, he couldn't die or lose a limb. He could only win or lose, nothing more. Sounds trivial but it's really earth shattering. Tennis is just a game. Pressure only exists if you think that event has pressure.

You are gripped by the tension of a crisis when you feel the event has taken on a larger significance than it usually warrants. The way to implement Plan B for mortals like you and is to continually deflate this tennis "crisis." Tennis is not brain surgery, not bad news at work. Missed backhands are not blows to my ego, not assaults on my family. In this frame of mind, mistakes and crises are treated just as the singular, rather unimportant events that they are and nothing more.

One final tip. Go back to the questions in the Crisis Management section of the Competitors' Questionnaire, and you will see questions, when put in the positive, can be affirmations you can use during competition.. The best one to repeat whenever you "question" your composure is to rehears the phrase, "I am a cool, calm and collected competitor." Say it enough times and you will believe it and act on it.

Watch for What's New on TennisONE for future columns on the Competitors' Questionnaire.

Copyright 1993 "Competitors' Questionnaire," by Jim McLennan and Carol Blackman. All rights reserved 1993.

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