22nd June 2013
Today’s piece is about what can happen when you start a match already in a bad mood. Or, to be more accurate, the perils of starting a match when you’re already in a bad mood; or, the inadvisedness of starting a match etc etc.
I may as well tell you now that this piece does not include a stunning insight into how NOT to start a match in a bad mood. It won’t offer, either, a solution to curing a bad mood when said bad mood is having a deleterious effect on one’s performance. In fact, I might just as well end the piece now with the simple imprecation: “Don’t start a match in a bad mood”, and leave it at that. Except that my story may offer a little solace to those who have been, and will be, similarly afflicted.
So, I start the match in a bad mood. But, after last week, the rhythm and the swing thoughts are in perfect harmony and all is well for the first few ends. It is probably obvious to anyone in my vicinity that I am in a bad mood but it is not affecting my delivery and so, bowl by bowl, my mood incrementally lifts.
The first delay to the mood lifting process comes when my front two still haven’t put a wood near the jack and we are already on the fifth end. Me and my third are playing well enough to be comfortably ahead, but we’re not because the front two’s abject performance so far has meant that all our efforts have been towards rescuing ends or damage limitation. Normally, I would be able to easily rise above my frustration at their uselessness and offer gentle and courteous encouragement, but I’m in a bad mood and so smiles and soothing words fail me.
They, of course, are fully aware of their failings and interpret my dark looks as being caused by their poor play. This increases their anxiety, which tightens their muscles and they play even worse. I am only too aware of this connection between anxiety and performance, and I want to break the cycle before it’s too late but my pre-existing bad mood gets in the way, which makes my mood worse.
Just short of half way through we play an end where for the first time I come to the mat with an open hand and we are holding a few. I’m playing well anyway and can feel myself relax still further at the prospect of not having to perform heroics. For the first time this season I step forward in complete control and roll two beautiful woods right on to the jack. The first one has put pressure on my oppo and he has pulls his first one narrow. I’m standing behind him as he attempts to rescue the desperate situation and see immediately that he pulls his second one too, but worse this time. A couple of yards short of the head it clips an outlier and rolls into the count. My third walks back up the green holding just one digit aloft.
Now I am on the cusp of a really bad mood. My front two bowl a quartet of stinkers and I’m back in the role of rescuer-in-chief. The perfect rhythm of my last two woods is still in my arm and my first one goes close to avert disaster but still leaves them holding one. For my second I can see the perfect play. I step forward confidently and put a peach of a swing on it. It has gone maybe 10 feet when I realise I have put the bias on the wrong side: a fundamentally stupid error.
I’m off the cliff now and hurtling towards an all-encompassing downer. Just like in the cartoons when Wile E Fox runs off the edge of a cliff and has enough time to contemplate his situation and lack of options before inevitably plummeting, so I seem to be in complete control of my faculties and have perfect insight into the inherent dangers of letting misfortune upset my hard earned equilibrium. I know exactly what I need to do to rescue the situation: I’ve written about it often enough. I smile at my third, acknowledge my oppo’s sympathetic remarks, I assess the state of the game and the quality of the opposition, I bring back the very recent memory of bowling two perfect woods, I even take a few deep breaths. I look at the beautiful surroundings and note my immense good fortune to be living in a civilised place doing nice things with nice people, healthy in body and mind with a caring, loving family.
Then I plummet. And in plummeting I revert to type and start the inevitable process of dismantling. Having only last week re-remembered that dismantling the physical is a sure way to ruin, I set about dismantling the mental. The result is that instead of being a pregnant giraffe on stilts, I am a temporarily paralysed pregnant giraffe on stilts as I hazily remember that I mustn’t under any circumstances interfere with the physical. The rest of the game passes tortuously.
Being well brought up I am able to get through the post-match formalities with a glaze of civilised small-talk masking the ever-deepening interior gloom. Luckily, when I get back home, a serendipitous confluence of unlikely circumstance mean that I am not required to function as a member of a close-knit family for a good hour or so. I use this hour wisely: I sit stock still, head bowed staring blankly at the oatmeal carpet, the dirty oatmeal carpet.
I’m not often in a bad mood, and the experience of starting a match in a bad mood only reinforces my belief that clarity of purpose is a paramount goal for the games player. Mood fog is bad. It should be banned.
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