cheats: Inspiration Messages: Cheating In The Game Of Tennis

Inspiration Messages: Cheating In The Game Of Tennis

On a beautiful sunny afternoon a few weeks ago I was privileged to watch a tennis match during a national championship at a club near where I live. It was a lovely club, a lovely day and I was in good company so it should have been a relaxing experience with no lessons or inspiration messages of note. The particular match I sat down to watch was an intriguing encounter between Julie, the daughter of a friend, and a lady player somewhat older than her. Julie is a very talented player in her early teenage years and is already regularly ranked highly for here age group despite problems with injury and financing. Her opponent was a semi-professional or perhaps professional from Russia in her twenties who had played in the opening rounds of the Wimbledon tournament. With this knowledge the match would seem to be tipped in favour of the adult player. However Julie is an extremely promising player and it would be interesting to see how she played against a much older opponent. I was interested to note that, as the match progressed, the Russian seemed to be the less talented of the two and began to be upset by the abilities of her younger opponent. Bit by bit this started to change the nature of the match. The older of the two players began to employ tactics that were frankly cheating. She would disrupt the play by calling her opponents shots out when they were in and would debate the score or even alter it in her favour. Because she was the much older and larger player she started to verbally bully Julie. In such tournaments there are not enough umpires to watch all the matches so there was no one in authority to see what was going on. However, after a while, Julie’s father had seen enough and asked the supervising umpire to specifically watch this particular match. Fortunately the umpire knew Julie and agreed to oversee the rest of play. Incredibly the Russian player began to bully the umpire too. Now the umpire was present things did start to calm down and the official managed to exert some control over events. The older player founds she could not exert her influence quite so much. However the previous events had shaken Julie and her confidence damaged. Her play deteriorated and she lost the match. I was left wondering why someone would resort to such tactics and why someone would feel it appropriate to cheat. My initial thought was that the older player was so set on winning she would do what it took no matter the morals involved. But then I started to wonder if it was more than that. To my eyes the Russian woman was afraid. There was no doubt she had very negative body language (my friend said ‘she is falling apart’) and I could read her feelings in her eyes. Her problem was not just that she wanted to win but that she was a victim of a fear of failure. It could be that she felt she had passed her peak and that she was falling down the rankings. In this match she was playing a girl half her age who clearly had more talent. Defeat was looming and she was frightened of it. In all aspects of life, but most particularly in sport, defeat is an important experience. It is said that you learn more from defeat than from winning and I agree with that. Nobody wants to lose but it is important to know how to benefit from losing and learn by it. It is noticeable for example that the best drivers in Formula 1 motor racing say after a defeat ‘we will learn what we need to do to improve.’ So what is the point of cheating in order to win? In my opinion cheating will only get you so far in tennis. As you progress up the levels matches will have umpires on each match and you begin to meet good players such as Julie; your lack of talent then becomes obvious. It seems accepted that cheating is widespread in junior tennis. To play the sport seriously therefore you need to find the inspiration messages to deal with it. Julie could have won her match simply by keeping calm. How could this be achieved? The Russian player had been signalling to Julie that she knew her talent was lacking and she was becoming frightened. Experience will one day help Julie realize that this is the time to coolly step up her game and destroy her opponent. The Olympic athlete put it this way: "I could lose all my money. I could lose my house. But I can't fail, because there is no such thing as failure. If you're an athlete or whatever you do, the worst thing is to be afraid of failure."