A New Perspective on Choking: Part 1

[arturohernandez]

Indeed. Especially in an era of so many prominent, powerful sociopaths

Unfortunately, I don't think this is particular to our era. Most likely, we are just more aware of them now. Like the former Uber CEO who went off on an Uber driver and was caught on camera. Harder to hide these days...

[don_budge]

"There are two forms of choking:

The first is over thinking, or paralysis by analysis. The second is fear of failure to the degree such that performing specific sports movements is blocked."



"The question is what contribution RET can make in defining and handling choking? Let’s look at two major sources of mental difficulty, namely the system of point scoring in tennis and the serve.

The point system in tennis is all about winning games and sets. Even if you have accumulated fewer points overall than your opponent, you can still win the match in sets. Novotna lost the 1993 Wimbledon final after multiple double faults.
Conversely, you may very well have accumulated more points than your opponent but if you don't win the big points, you win nothing. Big points are those points that lead to game, set and match wins.

Mental pressure can arise when you want to take advantage of your chances on those points and avoid mistakes. The player may start overanalyzing or becoming anxious at those times causing serve execution to suffer.

When playing those key points, the quality of serve execution is often the focus. The example of Jana Novotna is often cited in this case. It shows that the serve suffers most from choking on big points.

Novotna was a Czech professional player who won Wimbledon in 1995. But two years earlier, she played a final against Steffi Graf. Novotna was leading 4-1 in the third set. But after several double faults, Novotna lost the match.

This failure by Novotna is far from unique. Choking on serve is common in tennis.

For example you have set point against you on your own serve, and for the first time you double fault. You haven’t hit a double fault for a whole match until the moment it becomes crucial and at that very moment it goes wrong."

Really? I don't know. Seems to me this article sort of suffers from "paralysis by analysis" itself. I'm not sure if we can assume that there are two forms of choking either. What if there is really only one? Inexperience.

Among the plethora of articles that have come and gone through the years in this elite website about tennis there is one that stands out in my mind regarding the issue of choking. I believe that it all boils down to nerves. Nerves are a long, long story and each and every individual has there own set of triggers that set them off. But the biggest of all is just plain inexperience. If you haven't been there before, the scenario looks to be unfamiliar. Unfamiliar breeds a sensation that causes the victim to get lost and therefore a feeling of helplessness takes over. The feet stop moving. Now you have the recipe for disaster...fear and loss of mobility. Isn't that what a good old nightmare feels like. Someone is imminently threatening your very existence and you are so paralyzed with fear...you can't even move to do anything about it. Suddenly you are choking in your dream...literally.

In the course of development in any tennis player they are constantly reaching places where they have never been before. This is what the subject of the article was that I cannot seem to recall but it had to do with never being there before. It was about how we react to new situations under pressure. For instance...the tie-breaker is a particularly nervy proposition and surely this is a great place to put the label of choke on a player. Not coincidentally it involves a heavy emphasis on the serve. So the big takeaway from the initial salvo in this article was the section on "Big Points". The author begins to discuss the scoring system and the importance of serving. Huge insight here.

When confronted with unfamiliar situations the human reaction tends to be one of distraction. Thoughts becomes scrambled when things are evolving at a rapid speed and the brain doesn't have the time or the experience to process and respond. The brain is on overload and what happens? All of the energy is wasted in the noodle and the messages to the feet cease to be the natural response to the moving ball. Now you have the feeling that you are underwater and moving in slow motion. Movement becomes laborious as opposed to reaction. The whole thing snowballs and suddenly you have no option but to merely stab or bunt at the ball because you are in no postion to make a stroke. There is no cure for this save for experience and the accumulation of the skills and knowledge that allow your instinct for survival to take over and fight like the dickens. Afterall...isn't that what the competitive aspect of this game is all about?

With experience the tennis player learns to concentrate during periods of extreme stress and he can focus on the score. The score is the only thing that matters...the player eventually must learn to play to the score without having to think about anything more than the point in front of you. You know the score and you know how to play the point at the end of your nose. Which is the whole point of the conscious state in tennis and in life for that matter...stay in the present. Know how you got there...know the consequences of the point in front of you and understand that there is an upside and a downside so play accordingly. Some points dictate all out aggression and some dictate defence and others most of all require some combination of both. That is a lot of information and there is no time to think. The only real solution is to somehow accumulate the knowledge and experience to have the best possible chance of survival.

The author does touch on the serve as a source where choking often gets the best of a player. That Novatna serve somehow sticks out in my mind. To the causal observer it looks fine...but to my eye I see a hitch. A pronounced one at that. The elbow tightens and getting the ball in play becomes an adventure. No wonder. I have been discussing the service motion for quite a few years. Coupled with the scoring system this complex motion is really subject to nerves on any given day, or maybe any given point, if the motion is less than perfect. Even the best players in the game suddenly get a little touch of nerves when it comes time to serve out a game or a match or a tournament. How many times do we see "great" players snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes time to serve it out?

I was very amused at arturohernandez's solution to spinning his way out of choking. This is precisely what choking is. To even try to right the ship by applying all sorts of excessive spin is the very definition of choking. Better to have trained on hitting the flatter ball in the beginning and have the sensation that you can "hit out" without the fear of losing control. Hitting out is a sensation in itself. To be able to hit out under pressure is what this game is all about as you enter the higher level upon higher level. This is the reason that the greatest of players remain at the top...they hit out under any and all circumstances. I remember one match at the U. S. Open where Roger Federer had Novak Djokovic on the very brink of defeat when at the most important point of the match and under extreme deficit of the score...Novak unleashed a comet of a forehand on a return of serve that just stunned everyone. Federer included. Novak was just being fatalistic and yet he knew that he had a chance of pulling it off. Not a stitch of fear. Just pure instinct. A result of being there...under all different circumstances. Now Djokovic has that point under his belt and he has built on his experience. He knows now and forever that he is equal to any circumstance and he can feel that fatalistic instinctive reaction and he is confident he will pull it off.

It is a game of energy and balance. In every player's strokes there are coefficients of friction and under pressure that number is going to raise. Better to train frictionless strokes so the energy will flow under pressure. The more friction in the strokes the easier it is for the opponent to knock you off balance. The energy is in the head? It should be in the feet. Play to the score...the players head should be in the game. Thinking about the score and what the point in front of them demands of them. Of course it helps to have the tools that you need at your disposal. That little chink in the serivce motion can give you quite the disturbing sensation just when you need it the least.

Looking forwards to part two Oliver! It is a great subject...the mental game.

[don_budge]

"There are two forms of choking:

The first is over thinking, or paralysis by analysis. The second is fear of failure to the degree such that performing specific sports movements is blocked."

Really? I don't know. Seems to me this article sort of suffers from "paralysis by analysis" itself. I'm not sure if we can assume that there are two forms of choking either. What if there is really only one? Inexperience.

If you haven't been there before, the scenario looks to be unfamiliar. Unfamiliar breeds a sensation that causes the victim to get lost and therefore a feeling of helplessness takes over. The feet stop moving. Now you have the recipe for disaster...fear and loss of mobility. Isn't that what a good old nightmare feels like. Someone is imminently threatening your very existence and you are so paralyzed with fear...you can't even move to do anything about it. Suddenly you are choking in your dream...literally.

It is a game of energy and balance. In every player's strokes there are coefficients of friction and under pressure that number is going to raise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGSu4r3IG8

Instead of thinking of it as choking I think it is possible to narrow it down to performance...or the lack thereof. I think that I can explain a metaphor from the game of golf to narrow down my "Gettysburg Address" in the previous post with a little help from Phil Mickelson.

Take the beginner golf with ambition. He begins his career by making two successive pars. It might take him a couple of rounds but sooner or later he will score three successive pars in a row. Eventually he is going to be in position to make four in a row and he might just surprise himself and reel off six in a row...but he begins to think on the seventh opportunity. He "chokes". But with perseverance he is going to get that opportunity and so on and so forth. Eventually he gets to number ten...at even par or maybe better. His downfall immediately begins on the eleventh as he starts to let his mind wander about getting to the clubhouse at even par.

And so it goes...he shoots himself in the foot over and over. One day he is at eighteen and all that he needs is one more par to make it to the clubhouse...and he "chokes" again. Eventually he is going to get there. But he keeps on putting himself in new territory until one day he realises...it is all the same. All he has to do is stay in the moment. There is nothing new under the sun. Aha...eureka!!!

It all boils down to performance and the forces that are against you. It is all about how you manage that moment...that point in front of your nose. The present. Phil discusses his performance at the Masters Golf Tournament this years when he just busted it in the final round. At his age! This is the opposite of choking...this is about "staying in the present" as Phil puts it so eloquently.

"There are two forms of choking:

The first is over thinking, or paralysis by analysis. The second is fear of failure to the degree such that performing specific sports movements is blocked."



"The question is what contribution RET can make in defining and handling choking? Let’s look at two major sources of mental difficulty, namely the system of point scoring in tennis and the serve.

The point system in tennis is all about winning games and sets. Even if you have accumulated fewer points overall than your opponent, you can still win the match in sets. Novotna lost the 1993 Wimbledon final after multiple double faults.
Conversely, you may very well have accumulated more points than your opponent but if you don't win the big points, you win nothing. Big points are those points that lead to game, set and match wins.

Mental pressure can arise when you want to take advantage of your chances on those points and avoid mistakes. The player may start overanalyzing or becoming anxious at those times causing serve execution to suffer.

When playing those key points, the quality of serve execution is often the focus. The example of Jana Novotna is often cited in this case. It shows that the serve suffers most from choking on big points.

Novotna was a Czech professional player who won Wimbledon in 1995. But two years earlier, she played a final against Steffi Graf. Novotna was leading 4-1 in the third set. But after several double faults, Novotna lost the match.

This failure by Novotna is far from unique. Choking on serve is common in tennis.

For example you have set point against you on your own serve, and for the first time you double fault. You haven’t hit a double fault for a whole match until the moment it becomes crucial and at that very moment it goes wrong."

Really? I don't know. Seems to me this article sort of suffers from "paralysis by analysis" itself. I'm not sure if we can assume that there are two forms of choking either. What if there is really only one? Inexperience.

Among the plethora of articles that have come and gone through the years in this elite website about tennis there is one that stands out in my mind regarding the issue of choking. I believe that it all boils down to nerves. Nerves are a long, long story and each and every individual has there own set of triggers that set them off. But the biggest of all is just plain inexperience. If you haven't been there before, the scenario looks to be unfamiliar. Unfamiliar breeds a sensation that causes the victim to get lost and therefore a feeling of helplessness takes over. The feet stop moving. Now you have the recipe for disaster...fear and loss of mobility. Isn't that what a good old nightmare feels like. Someone is imminently threatening your very existence and you are so paralyzed with fear...you can't even move to do anything about it. Suddenly you are choking in your dream...literally.

In the course of development in any tennis player they are constantly reaching places where they have never been before. This is what the subject of the article was that I cannot seem to recall but it had to do with never being there before. It was about how we react to new situations under pressure. For instance...the tie-breaker is a particularly nervy proposition and surely this is a great place to put the label of choke on a player. Not coincidentally it involves a heavy emphasis on the serve. So the big takeaway from the initial salvo in this article was the section on "Big Points". The author begins to discuss the scoring system and the importance of serving. Huge insight here.

When confronted with unfamiliar situations the human reaction tends to be one of distraction. Thoughts becomes scrambled when things are evolving at a rapid speed and the brain doesn't have the time or the experience to process and respond. The brain is on overload and what happens? All of the energy is wasted in the noodle and the messages to the feet cease to be the natural response to the moving ball. Now you have the feeling that you are underwater and moving in slow motion. Movement becomes laborious as opposed to reaction. The whole thing snowballs and suddenly you have no option but to merely stab or bunt at the ball because you are in no postion to make a stroke. There is no cure for this save for experience and the accumulation of the skills and knowledge that allow your instinct for survival to take over and fight like the dickens. Afterall...isn't that what the competitive aspect of this game is all about?

With experience the tennis player learns to concentrate during periods of extreme stress and he can focus on the score. The score is the only thing that matters...the player eventually must learn to play to the score without having to think about anything more than the point in front of you. You know the score and you know how to play the point at the end of your nose. Which is the whole point of the conscious state in tennis and in life for that matter...stay in the present. Know how you got there...know the consequences of the point in front of you and understand that there is an upside and a downside so play accordingly. Some points dictate all out aggression and some dictate defence and others most of all require some combination of both. That is a lot of information and there is no time to think. The only real solution is to somehow accumulate the knowledge and experience to have the best possible chance of survival.

The author does touch on the serve as a source where choking often gets the best of a player. That Novatna serve somehow sticks out in my mind. To the causal observer it looks fine...but to my eye I see a hitch. A pronounced one at that. The elbow tightens and getting the ball in play becomes an adventure. No wonder. I have been discussing the service motion for quite a few years. Coupled with the scoring system this complex motion is really subject to nerves on any given day, or maybe any given point, if the motion is less than perfect. Even the best players in the game suddenly get a little touch of nerves when it comes time to serve out a game or a match or a tournament. How many times do we see "great" players snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes time to serve it out?

I was very amused at arturohernandez's solution to spinning his way out of choking. This is precisely what choking is. To even try to right the ship by applying all sorts of excessive spin is the very definition of choking. Better to have trained on hitting the flatter ball in the beginning and have the sensation that you can "hit out" without the fear of losing control. Hitting out is a sensation in itself. To be able to hit out under pressure is what this game is all about as you enter the higher level upon higher level. This is the reason that the greatest of players remain at the top...they hit out under any and all circumstances. I remember one match at the U. S. Open where Roger Federer had Novak Djokovic on the very brink of defeat when at the most important point of the match and under extreme deficit of the score...Novak unleashed a comet of a forehand on a return of serve that just stunned everyone. Federer included. Novak was just being fatalistic and yet he knew that he had a chance of pulling it off. Not a stitch of fear. Just pure instinct. A result of being there...under all different circumstances. Now Djokovic has that point under his belt and he has built on his experience. He knows now and forever that he is equal to any circumstance and he can feel that fatalistic instinctive reaction and he is confident he will pull it off.

It is a game of energy and balance. In every player's strokes there are coefficients of friction and under pressure that number is going to raise. Better to train frictionless strokes so the energy will flow under pressure. The more friction in the strokes the easier it is for the opponent to knock you off balance. The energy is in the head? It should be in the feet. Play to the score...the players head should be in the game. Thinking about the score and what the point in front of them demands of them. Of course it helps to have the tools that you need at your disposal. That little chink in the serivce motion can give you quite the disturbing sensation just when you need it the least.

Looking forwards to part two Oliver! It is a great subject...the mental game.

Hi Don Budge. Thanks!The description of two types of choking comes from scientific literature.It is by no means conclusive. The article explains one specific form of choking from a RET perspective, a fear of inferiority before and after playing a big point. That fear can be traced to perfectionism, not being able to tolerate making mistakes in those moments. In his book Psychodyamics, Gologor calls that last chance perfectionism. I do believe that while choking you think of a part of the movement controlling the toss whatever and not of the movement as a whole. 2. Novotna turns the head to the court too soon in an effort to prevent the serve from going out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGSu4r3IG8

Instead of thinking of it as choking I think it is possible to narrow it down to performance...or the lack thereof. I think that I can explain a metaphor from the game of golf to narrow down my "Gettysburg Address" in the previous post with a little help from Phil Mickelson.

Take the beginner golf with ambition. He begins his career by making two successive pars. It might take him a couple of rounds but sooner or later he will score three successive pars in a row. Eventually he is going to be in position to make four in a row and he might just surprise himself and reel off six in a row...but he begins to think on the seventh opportunity. He "chokes". But with perseverance he is going to get that opportunity and so on and so forth. Eventually he gets to number ten...at even par or maybe better. His downfall immediately begins on the eleventh as he starts to let his mind wander about getting to the clubhouse at even par.

And so it goes...he shoots himself in the foot over and over. One day he is at eighteen and all that he needs is one more par to make it to the clubhouse...and he "chokes" again. Eventually he is going to get there. But he keeps on putting himself in new territory until one day he realises...it is all the same. All he has to do is stay in the moment. There is nothing new under the sun. Aha...eureka!!!

It all boils down to performance and the forces that are against you. It is all about how you manage that moment...that point in front of your nose. The present. Phil discusses his performance at the Masters Golf Tournament this years when he just busted it in the final round. At his age! This is the opposite of choking...this is about "staying in the present" as Phil puts it so eloquently.

"There are two forms of choking:

The first is over thinking, or paralysis by analysis. The second is fear of failure to the degree such that performing specific sports movements is blocked."



"The question is what contribution RET can make in defining and handling choking? Let’s look at two major sources of mental difficulty, namely the system of point scoring in tennis and the serve.

The point system in tennis is all about winning games and sets. Even if you have accumulated fewer points overall than your opponent, you can still win the match in sets. Novotna lost the 1993 Wimbledon final after multiple double faults.
Conversely, you may very well have accumulated more points than your opponent but if you don't win the big points, you win nothing. Big points are those points that lead to game, set and match wins.

Mental pressure can arise when you want to take advantage of your chances on those points and avoid mistakes. The player may start overanalyzing or becoming anxious at those times causing serve execution to suffer.

When playing those key points, the quality of serve execution is often the focus. The example of Jana Novotna is often cited in this case. It shows that the serve suffers most from choking on big points.

Novotna was a Czech professional player who won Wimbledon in 1995. But two years earlier, she played a final against Steffi Graf. Novotna was leading 4-1 in the third set. But after several double faults, Novotna lost the match.

This failure by Novotna is far from unique. Choking on serve is common in tennis.

For example you have set point against you on your own serve, and for the first time you double fault. You haven’t hit a double fault for a whole match until the moment it becomes crucial and at that very moment it goes wrong."

Really? I don't know. Seems to me this article sort of suffers from "paralysis by analysis" itself. I'm not sure if we can assume that there are two forms of choking either. What if there is really only one? Inexperience.

Among the plethora of articles that have come and gone through the years in this elite website about tennis there is one that stands out in my mind regarding the issue of choking. I believe that it all boils down to nerves. Nerves are a long, long story and each and every individual has there own set of triggers that set them off. But the biggest of all is just plain inexperience. If you haven't been there before, the scenario looks to be unfamiliar. Unfamiliar breeds a sensation that causes the victim to get lost and therefore a feeling of helplessness takes over. The feet stop moving. Now you have the recipe for disaster...fear and loss of mobility. Isn't that what a good old nightmare feels like. Someone is imminently threatening your very existence and you are so paralyzed with fear...you can't even move to do anything about it. Suddenly you are choking in your dream...literally.

In the course of development in any tennis player they are constantly reaching places where they have never been before. This is what the subject of the article was that I cannot seem to recall but it had to do with never being there before. It was about how we react to new situations under pressure. For instance...the tie-breaker is a particularly nervy proposition and surely this is a great place to put the label of choke on a player. Not coincidentally it involves a heavy emphasis on the serve. So the big takeaway from the initial salvo in this article was the section on "Big Points". The author begins to discuss the scoring system and the importance of serving. Huge insight here.

When confronted with unfamiliar situations the human reaction tends to be one of distraction. Thoughts becomes scrambled when things are evolving at a rapid speed and the brain doesn't have the time or the experience to process and respond. The brain is on overload and what happens? All of the energy is wasted in the noodle and the messages to the feet cease to be the natural response to the moving ball. Now you have the feeling that you are underwater and moving in slow motion. Movement becomes laborious as opposed to reaction. The whole thing snowballs and suddenly you have no option but to merely stab or bunt at the ball because you are in no postion to make a stroke. There is no cure for this save for experience and the accumulation of the skills and knowledge that allow your instinct for survival to take over and fight like the dickens. Afterall...isn't that what the competitive aspect of this game is all about?

With experience the tennis player learns to concentrate during periods of extreme stress and he can focus on the score. The score is the only thing that matters...the player eventually must learn to play to the score without having to think about anything more than the point in front of you. You know the score and you know how to play the point at the end of your nose. Which is the whole point of the conscious state in tennis and in life for that matter...stay in the present. Know how you got there...know the consequences of the point in front of you and understand that there is an upside and a downside so play accordingly. Some points dictate all out aggression and some dictate defence and others most of all require some combination of both. That is a lot of information and there is no time to think. The only real solution is to somehow accumulate the knowledge and experience to have the best possible chance of survival.

The author does touch on the serve as a source where choking often gets the best of a player. That Novatna serve somehow sticks out in my mind. To the causal observer it looks fine...but to my eye I see a hitch. A pronounced one at that. The elbow tightens and getting the ball in play becomes an adventure. No wonder. I have been discussing the service motion for quite a few years. Coupled with the scoring system this complex motion is really subject to nerves on any given day, or maybe any given point, if the motion is less than perfect. Even the best players in the game suddenly get a little touch of nerves when it comes time to serve out a game or a match or a tournament. How many times do we see "great" players snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes time to serve it out?

I was very amused at arturohernandez's solution to spinning his way out of choking. This is precisely what choking is. To even try to right the ship by applying all sorts of excessive spin is the very definition of choking. Better to have trained on hitting the flatter ball in the beginning and have the sensation that you can "hit out" without the fear of losing control. Hitting out is a sensation in itself. To be able to hit out under pressure is what this game is all about as you enter the higher level upon higher level. This is the reason that the greatest of players remain at the top...they hit out under any and all circumstances. I remember one match at the U. S. Open where Roger Federer had Novak Djokovic on the very brink of defeat when at the most important point of the match and under extreme deficit of the score...Novak unleashed a comet of a forehand on a return of serve that just stunned everyone. Federer included. Novak was just being fatalistic and yet he knew that he had a chance of pulling it off. Not a stitch of fear. Just pure instinct. A result of being there...under all different circumstances. Now Djokovic has that point under his belt and he has built on his experience. He knows now and forever that he is equal to any circumstance and he can feel that fatalistic instinctive reaction and he is confident he will pull it off.

It is a game of energy and balance. In every player's strokes there are coefficients of friction and under pressure that number is going to raise. Better to train frictionless strokes so the energy will flow under pressure. The more friction in the strokes the easier it is for the opponent to knock you off balance. The energy is in the head? It should be in the feet. Play to the score...the players head should be in the game. Thinking about the score and what the point in front of them demands of them. Of course it helps to have the tools that you need at your disposal. That little chink in the serivce motion can give you quite the disturbing sensation just when you need it the least.

Looking forwards to part two Oliver! It is a great subject...the mental game.

The Federer case is interesting as he had matchpoints against Djockovic in Wimbledon final 2019 on his own serve in a match were his stats were far superior to Novak's and he again as in 2010 Us open match couldn't use his full serve potential.

[doctorhl]

Interesting dynamic in tennis scoring that plays into the broad choking psyche. In a best of 3 set match one can badly lose every single point in a 6-0 first set and the score is really just 1 to 0. Never really far behind, never really far ahead when you just play for a total of 3 points(sets). What are the implications for sustained focus?

The Federer case is interesting as he had matchpoints against Djockovic in Wimbledon final 2019 on his own serve in a match were his stats were far superior to Novak's and he again as in 2010 Us open match couldn't use his full serve potential.

And as i said earlier, the definition of choking is by no means conclusive. Yes choking can result from inexperience but in the article i go into the causes of choking looking at it from a RET perspective. Then the player has to deal with a fear of inferiority just before hitting a serve. 'Don't miss it because that would make you a loser'! And after missing the serve on setpoint: 'Losers tend to do stupid on big point.' Which keeps you from taking responsability for your mistake and keeps you from learning.

[stotty]

Choking is certainly a topic well worth studying. All of us have experienced it at some point or other.

''What you see is what you get'' most of the time. If you allow negative thoughts to creep in then negative is what you will get.

I had a doubles partner (sadly no longer with us) who relished the big points in a match because he was convinced he had bigger balls than anyone else. Most of the time, ''what he saw was what he got'' because that is what he genuinely believed. He was a handy partner to have because I was not nearly so steely and he returned on the ad side...so played all the bigger points. I miss him. He was a really nice man with it. Tough as nails on a court, generous and funny afterwards in the bar.

[doctorhl]

Choking is certainly a topic well worth studying. All of us have experienced it at some point or other.

''What you see is what you get'' most of the time. If you allow negative thoughts to creep in then negative is what you will get.

I had a doubles partner (sadly no longer with us) who relished the big points in a match because he was convinced he had bigger balls than anyone else. Most of the time, ''what he saw was what he got'' because that is what he genuinely believed. He was a handy partner to have because I was not nearly so steely and he returned on the ad side...so played all the bigger points. I miss him. He was a really nice man with it. Tough as nails on a court, generous and funny afterwards in the bar.

Tennis relationships last a lifetime....that's what is all about!!!

[stotty]

Tennis relationships last a lifetime....that's what is all about!!!

Thanks...and true. And there are few better way to judge a man than the way he behaves on court.