Checking Out Early - The FedEx
Story.
I was watching the French Open
tennis tournament 2013 last Sunday, a match involving Switzerland Roger Federer
and Frances Giles Simon. It was a fantastic match and by now I wouldn't be
revealing any spoilers if i told you that Federer won the match in 5 sets. But what the score line wouldn’t show you was
at one point in the match Federer was down and out, for Giles Simon was leading
with one set and three games up (in the fourth set). Federer not only managed
to win that set to equalize at two sets apiece, he also won the crucial fifth
set to win the match. Now we all know that Federer is a great player and he can
turn it on at will and then no one can match him. But that was not the case on
Sunday. As it was a Sunday night match and I was at home and totally free, I
watched the entire match right from the beginning and I could see that Roger
Federer was below par that day, he was struggling and he had not brought his
A-game to the match.
But what really transpired that
day was that Giles Simon spectacularly self combusted losing the match. From
the fourth set on, his returns down the line regularly found the net and his
volleys were feeble compared to the second and third set where he had been near
invincible. The post match expert commentators had an interesting theory on
why. They said that Simon had simply chocked, when he had realized that he was
leading the great Roger Federer by a set and games in the prestigious French
open. As long as he felt that he was the underdog in the match-up he had been
okay but once he realized he was actually on the verge of victory over Federer
he coudnt handle the extra pressure and had simply self imploded.
One of the commentators went on to
talk about how people with low self confidence literally sabotage their own
chances of winning right at the verge of victory. Which kind of makes sense
doesnt it? Giles Simon woke up from his trance sometime in the middle of the
fourth set, looked at the score board and thought "hold on, I am leading
Federer? holy cockamolly" and promptly gave up his spirit and lost. Or
maybe he thought "Hold on, this is the French Open and we can’t have
someone like Federer out so early in a major grand slam, who will people
watch?" and so he gave up his ghost.
Interesting as these theories are,
they do have a grain of truth in them as applicable to regular life. Some of us
are so obsessed with our goals or with winning that we sometimes forget to plan
for the morning after winning. The reason for it is that these people in their
heart of hearts dont believe they will win.
As they secretly believe that they are going to lose, they are
unprepared for the contingency of winning and are a total loss to deal with it,
if by some miracle they win.
When i was in college, I had seen
this situation again and again in the case of guys who went out to propose to
girls who were a cut above them- the classy girls, the A-listers. The guys were
totally sure the girl would reject them flat, they were only pretending to
propose to raise their profile among the other guys, as the guy who had walked
up to so-and-so bravely and proposed. But sometimes cruel fate intervened and
the girls through some momentary lapse of concentration or quirky whim actually
accepted. And then these guys would be in an absolute panic and would go around
asking others for advice on how to break up fast. For such things never lasted
or became a success as long as the guy felt that the girl was a cut above him
and hence felt he didn’t deserve a hottie like her. It was not meant to be, as
they say.
Well to return to the match, that
explanation by the experts perfectly covers the reason why Giles Simon lost
from a winning position - he chocked. But i have an alternative explanation to
offer. I may not be a tennis expert or a retired tennis great, but i do know a
little bit about human psychology and what i saw on television that day
convinced me that Giles Simon didn’t choke on the contrary he had mentally
checked out early in the certainty of coasting to a win from that point on, so
he mentally relaxed and gave up his grip on the match.
For the first three sets Simon had
played a regular serve and volley game and had rarely rushed to the net. From
the fourth set onwards he tried to match Federer's flair with drop shots and
backspins. Federer being Federer can play those shots and make them look easy.
But Giles Simon shouldn’t have attempted to. If only he had stuck to his
strengths he might have won the match however ugly his shots were to look at.
To play as elegant as Roger Federer and still win, takes a, well a Roger
Federer. And Simon Giles is not a Roger Federer even on an off-day for Federer.
A back court serve and volley player does not suddenly turn into a rush the net
player in the middle of a crucial match, especially a match in which he is well
ahead and winning. Roger himself would have been surprised to watch Simon Giles
suddenly abandon his original style of play and try all those fancy shots. But
like all great players, Federer wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth
and thankfully accepting the gift, he closed out the match to progress to the
quarter finals. In the end, it was Giles Simon who defeated Giles Simon and not
Federer. Who just hung around long enough to accept the result handed to him on
a platter.
Where Giles went wrong was in
celebrating too early. He decided that he had the match wrapped up and mentally
relaxed. Which was just the point at which things started going wrong for him.
It always happens that way, even in normal life when you forget the present and
start living in the future. I have had a personal experience of this from my
early days of practice. As you know, surgery, any surgery is fraught with risk
however the talent of the surgeon and the minimization of the risk with
adequate precautions. The human body can react in absolutely different and
unique ways for each individual that we can never predict that this is how this
person will react to this surgery. Every surgery is a new one and anything can
go wrong anytime. That is why surgeons are trained not only to anticipate
everything which can go wrong but also to think on their feet, to manage
whatever surprises are thrown up halfway through a surgery.
A few years ago, I had the
peculiar experience of facing surgical complications regularly on my Saturday
evening cases- ruining the rest of my weekend. As I am a great believer in
learning from reviews, I collected all the data on why every Saturday I ended
up with a complicated case and spent some off time analyzing the data. What I
learnt from the data was surprising. Almost all the complicated cases i had
seen were the last case on a Saturday night. I probed further and further and
at one point i realized that the cases themselves were at the usual level of
difficulty but what had happened was that i had relaxed mentally and made some
minor error like tying off the knot in the suture thread too tightly, thereby
breaking the thread and again having to do re-do the entire suture from the
beginning and things like that.. What had happened was that sometime (or
halfway) through the surgery I had subconsciously realized that this was the
last case on Saturday night and after this I had the whole weekend (just Sunday
is the entire weekend for us) to look forward to, plans to make and things to
do and I had shifted to the weekend mode even before I had finished the
surgery. Hence the tight hands and broken knots.
Once i realized my error, i made
two changes to my routine. The first was to completely stop doing any surgeries
on Saturday evenings and sticking to only consultations - just conversations
you know? You can’t make any major errors that way, however mentally distracted
you become about weekend plans. That decision not only reduced a major stress
in my life and made my weekends more mentally relaxing; it also made me a
better surgeon on Saturday mornings for now i knew that my greatest care and
mental alertness was required especially for the last surgery of the day around
noon. My second change was to make sure that I took extreme care that I was at
the top of my game, brought my A-game to the last surgery of the day, every
day, to prevent any mental relaxation like i had done previously. To give every
surgery the respect due, whether it is the first one on a fresh Monday morning
or the last one on a tired Saturday afternoon. That made me a better surgeon
and gave me fantastic results too.
And coincidentally, these are the
things which no one teaches you at college. Things which you learn by yourself
from life. To postpone celebrating till you have actually crossed the rope. And
not to relax till it is all over, completely, and the credits have rolled
across the screen.. For things can change in a jiffy, as Simon found out in
last Sundays match.
So what do you think? Of all the
above explanations for Simon's defeat, which do you think was the most probable
one? Care to share your thoughts?
[P.S. By the time I finished
writing this Roger Federer was out of the French Open 2013 tournament defeated
by Jo Wilfred Tsonga]
No comments:
Post a Comment