The mental side of sports

One of the most intriguing aspects of sports to me has always been the mental factors that come into play. To me, the cerebral decisions that influence actions are far more interesting than just the raw athleticism on display. It fascinates me how physically unremarkable specimens like Wayne Gretzky can rise to the top of their sport through a superior ability to predict where players would go. That may not be as impressive to watch as an Alex Ovechkin feat of raw athleticism*, but it can be even more effective.

*That’s not to say that Ovechkin doesn’t have cerebral skills as well. He certainly does, and that’s been a big part of his success, but he’s more physically gifted to start with than Gretzky ever was.

That tale has been replayed across sports countless times. One of the great examples is Greg Maddux. Maddux never had the lights-out stuff of other star pitchers like Pedro Martinez, Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson, but in a way, that made him even more appealing to many. Joe Posnanski wrote a fantastic piece on Maddux after his retirement last year where he broke down one of the most impressive games Maddux pitched, against the 1997 New York Yankees.

“It was a domination that the Yankees could not understand even after it was over. You know that expression: He never knew what hit him? That was Maddux. The Yankees griped afterward, about the umpiring, about their own impatience about their missed opportunities. And they did not appreciate that they had simply been Madduxed and there was no cure.”

For those of us not blessed with 100-mile-an-hour fastballs, blazing speed on skates or incredible physiques, dominant athletes like Gretzky and Maddux offer not only hope, but also a more tangible connection. Even if they’re just as far ahead of us, it’s a more egalitarian superstardom; they’ve succeeded because of what’s in their heads, not because of amazing physical talents.

There’s perhaps even a deeper connection to the journeymen who have made it despite the odds, often by using their heads. For example, consider Brian Bannister, one of the few baseball players who admits to liking sabermetric stats. As Harry Pavlidis recently wrote in The Hardball Times, Bannister has studied his pitching stats for years and tried to use them to advance his career. This year, he went away from his fastball and focused on his cutter and power changeup in hopes of becoming more of a groundball pitcher. It’s worked particularly well to date; not only are batters hitting more ground balls off of him, but his ERA has dropped to 4.26 (from 5.76 last season), his ERA+ (ERA adjusted for park and league factors) has risen from 74 to 102 and his WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) has fallen from 1.495 to 1.338.

This is why I was more impressed by Y.E. Yang’s dramatic win over Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship yesterday than Usain Bolt setting a new world record in the 100 meters. As Andy Hutchins pointed out, Bolt’s achievement is truly remarkable from a physical standpoint. Bolt doesn’t even have a proper rival; many have been trying to raise Tyson Gay to his level, and Gay did run the third-fastest time in 100m history yesterday, but he was still .13 seconds behind Bolt and hasn’t beaten him since a win in the 200m in 2007. Some, including Jeff Blair of The Globe and Mail, have even speculated that a faster time may still be in the future for Bolt.

Impressive as that is, it’s tough to relate to it. For one thing, track perhaps involves less thinking than most sports, and the 100m dash even less than most track events. There’s no question of pacing yourself or deciding when to make your break; it’s an instantaneous test of reaction time, fast-twitch muscle fibres and just how fast you can run. For another thing, as the immortal John Updike once wrote for a piece on Ted Williams, “Gods do not answer letters.” We can respect Bolt’s achievement, but it’s so far above and beyond our physical capabilities that most of us can’t even dream of it.

Yang, on the other hand, is a very human story, and a story of humanity at its best. An unknown, unheralded middle-aged underdog with an unremarkable physique, he went head-to-head against golf’s Goliath and never flinched. It’s perhaps even more impressive because his achievement combined the mental and the physical. So much thinking goes into golf, from planning an approach to each hole to selecting clubs to judging the amount of power required on each drive or putt.

Yang’s adversary made it even more difficult. He was up against Woods, “The Chosen One“, the most intimidating opponent in golf and a man who could make the Terminator look frazzled. Despite a worldwide stage, an incredible amount of pressure and the weight of history on his shoulders, Yang played brilliantly and came through when it counted. His Promethean quest to unseat the god of golf not only proved successful, but also humanized Tiger in the process. His win demonstrates the importance of the mental side of sports, and that’s why I care about it more than Bolt’s record.

Tags: Baseball, golf, hockey, PGA, PGA Championship, Tiger Woods, Track, Usain Bolt, Y.E. Yang
Categories: Daily Specials

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Daily Specials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.