Wow, what a spectacle the men’s single’s tennis final at Wimbledon turned out to be yesterday!! It had everything – Federer, the five times (in a row) Champion reduced to 2-0 down in the first hour; an heroic comeback to draw level at two Sets apiece and then two great players matching each other’s brilliance in the deciding Set before Nadal’s raw strength, talent and determination brought him through as a worthy winner. And the tension was compounded by two rain breaks which gave the both players time to think…..and for the pressure to mount!
Personally, I found the psychology of the final, hailed by the press as the best ever, fascinating. It showed how intense pressure (driven by the desire to win, the fear of losing, the size/prestige of the prize and the crowd) in the contained context of the match took both players, and ultimately the game of tennis, to new levels. And this is what pressure in all forms of work can do - as long as you have the right support around you, it doesn’t last too long and you have the personal resources to cope with it.
We are all like Federer and Nadal to some degree – extreme pressure asks us difficult questions and drives us to find answers we didn’t know we were capable of coming up with. And that means that we find levels of performance we didn’t know we could deliver. You can’t be under pressure 24/7 but, as in tennis, the most spectacular results can emerge from relatively short bursts of intense pressure followed by respite.
I think that Chef, Gordon Ramsay summed up the constructive role that pressure can play in life when he said the following in an interview with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio FiveLive last year – also note the pressure doesn’t have to come from an external source:
“… I put myself under immense pressure - I’m very healthy, but I need that pressure. It only becomes stressful when you can’t handle it…..and boy, do I love handling it!”
