World Cup, Wimbledon and Technique Under Pressure

This is a fantastic time in the sporting year - World Cup, Wimbledon, US Open Golf, IAAF Athletics. Fantastic. It is also a lively time for me sport-wise as I try to balance running and tennis.

Saturday was interesting in that respect. I had a shoulder op in Jan and have been on a race to get back for this tennis season ever since. Things have been going well, although re-modelling my serve to help my shoulder has been tough - I have twenty years of ingrained technique to overcome, and serving is so fundamental even at my level. 

On Saturday I was playing for my club - Halton Village - against arch rivals Great Missenden. Halton is a fantastic club if you ever get the chance to visit - if Lane4 was a tennis club, it would look and feel much like Halton.

http://www.haltontennis.co.uk/

So - things were tight against our rivals, and my job in the doubles pair was to serve at 4-5. I was fairly confident having played reasonably well most of the day. I was 40-30 up....and it all went wrong. Out of nowhere 2 double faults. I didn't feel nervous or anxious, they just happened. Being frank about it, my new technique just folded under pressure. Something I had done hundreds of times before that day inexplicably went wrong when it really counted. It had to be the pressure...and yet I wasn't conscious of it. We lost the Game, and so the set.

The irony of this was not lost on me when 3 hours later I was watching England vs United States in the World Cup.  I guess I saw exactly the same thing happen to Robert Green on a far bigger stage.

It's not many people who can say this, but Robert Green is now my role model as I pick myself up and dust myself down. I thought his reaction both in the moment and in front of the media was absolutely world class. Effectively he said, ''it happens, I prepare for handling it, I learn from what happened and move on''.

Technique does break down - in particular when it is new. A new serve or a new strategy...it is all the same. It happens, we deal with it, we move on.