Chapter 3
“Psyching up” and calming down: anxiety
in sport
The first round often provides the most panic-stricken snooker you’ll ever see. When the
lights go up it feels that you’re wearing a rabbit-skin waistcoat, no matter how much
experience you’ve got. It feels as if you’re playing with someone else’s arm. (Steve
Davis, former world champion snooker player, cited in Everton, 1998, p. 24)
When you go to hit your first shot, you can’t see the ball even though you are standing
over it. You have to tell yourself to hit it, though you’re looking down and it’s gone all
blurred. The funny thing about the Ryder Cup is that a certain level of pressure stays
throughout the whole week. Normally, that sort of pressure comes and goes in
tournaments and you really only feel it on the last nine holes. But at the Ryder Cup, it’s
there all week, even in the practice rounds. That’s why it’s so intense. (Golfer Pádraig
Harrington on the anxiety associated with playing in the Ryder Cup; cited in MacGinty,
2002, p. 19)
There is nothing you can do about nerves. If you’re not nervous then there is
something wrong with you. Nerves create adrenaline and I told them to use that, use it in
your own advantageous way, to make you feel better, get pumped up; just get psyched
up. (Sam Torrance, captain of the victorious 2002 European Ryder Cup team, cited in
O’Sullivan, 2002a, p. 19)
IntroductionCompetitive sport can make even the world’s most successful athlete feel nervous. For
example, the quotations above bear eloquent testimony to the anxiety experienced by
such seasoned performers as the six-times world champion snooker player Steve Davis
(when performing at the Crucible in Sheffield) and the world top-ten golfer Pádraig
Harrington (when playing for Europe in the 2002 Ryder Cup match against the United
States) in pressure situations (see Figure 3.1)