Some years ago, I started supporting the British League by attending some of the matches. As one would expect, the good players mostly won all their matches. There was one player in particular (who shall remain nameless in this account) that I had never seen lose a match. He expected himself to win and he seemingly always won. Mostly comfortably, occasionally closely, but he had always won.

This particular match started the same as all the previous ones. During the 2-minute warm up his opponent was seemed very determined, while he could not seem to get started. His timing was off a bit and he didn't settle.

All matches got started at the same time. After great struggle, he narrowly won the first set. He lost the second set but, in true professional fashion, seemed unaffected by this. Despite the end of set discussion with his team-mates, he then lost the third set too. Admittedly, the final 2 points of that set were an edge and a net respectively but, nonetheless, he was 2-1 down in games after winning the first and losing the next two. We all wondered what he was thinking. How can you train for this?

In the fourth game, I thought I could detect a break in his normally impervious mask, but maybe I was imagining it. His opponent was growing in confidence and the tension grew in the entire hall. The other matches ended quickly. He appeared to be not as composed as usual. He could feel the pressure, and though not comfortably, he scraped through and won the next game 11-9. The score was 2-2.

The end-of-set break seemed to last longer that the usual two minutes. The opponent was receiving advice from all his teammates, seemingly simultaneously. He came out “all guns blazing”, so to speak, and it was only at 7-1 down that our player seemed to make a fight of it. He dug deeply and came up 9-9. We were cheering every point enthusiastically. 4 points to win against 10 points to win and that was only if they didn’t go to deuce.

It was his turn to serve and we all waited with baited breath as he used his towel at 9-9. He had the serving advantage and we hoped he would make best use of it. The pressure must have been greater than we realised because, uncharacteristically, he missed the ball completely during his first serve. Just then, his opponent called a timeout.

(Part 2)