Bullied: File Under Mental Game

Charles Allen
Sep 3, 2018 · 6 min read

I like data. It’s something I can chew on, mull over, transform, visualize, and share. The sport my children play is tennis, so I spend a fair bit of time tracking matches and gathering data related to point outcomes… errors, winners, rally lengths, ball depth.

While tracking matches I’m also broadcasting, live, so that friends and family, coaches, and even sometimes the opponent’s network of contacts can have some idea of what’s happening on the court. As a result I’m intensely aware of what people think they’re seeing as a data stream flows by.

People read a lot into match results, which often have very little to say about the drama that actually occurs. And it’s not just people… algorithms distill results into ratings and rankings, and tend to produce expectations, which become part of the lens through which results are then viewed.

There’s only so much that a single person can capture while a ball is whizzing back and forth across a net, but even Hawk-Eye would be unable to discern attributes related to how personality types and inter-personal histories affect player performance. Such aspects of a match are not easy to quantify, and the narrative they belong to is difficult to correlate with the bulk of data being collected, but perhaps there are some telltales that can be extracted from match records, especially when analyzing a network of players.

The scenario I’m thinking of is this: Player A regularly defeats Players B and C. Player D regularly defeats Players A, B and C. Players B and C always win more games against Player D than Player A can win against Player D.

Restated: A decisively defeats B and C (6–1,6–0). D decisively defeats A (6–0, 6–1). D can’t decisively defeat B and C… the scores are routine (6–2, 6–3).

I’ve seen this pattern repeat numerous times over the past two years, and I’m pretty sure I know what is going on, because Player A is my son.

My family, and many others in our sports community, have been aware for more than three years that Player D was being coached by his father to bully, to make targeted comments both on and off court, but it wasn’t until recently that we realized the full extent of the bullying. My son and Player D were actually pretty good friends and doubles partners once-upon-a-time; but the friendship steadily eroded as the years passed. This summer there was a watershed event where all became clear; the bullying went beyond what could be explained away, the referee had to be made aware, and the incident needed to be made public knowledge. This was not an easy step to take because we knew that little if anything would be done by the federation, by the club, or by the majority of other parents. But it was the right thing to do.

So my contention is this: Player A shuts down emotionally when facing Player D. He goes through the motions, can play good points and even look good on the court… but there is little confidence or fight in his game and his number of unforced errors is high.

I’m not venturing that Player A could defeat Player D absent a history of bullying… but I do believe the match outcomes would be different, more inline with what could reasonably be expected within the cohort of players who face each other regularly.

And It’s not just Player A who has this experience. Player E, two years older than Player D, stronger, faster, with far better technique… has lost a number of times to D after defeating Player R, who has never lost to D. Everyone recognizes the emotional shut-down that sinks Player E’s game.

Bullying is certainly not the only scenario that could explain such anomalous patterns of match results within a player network. I think it would be interesting to explore whether there are discernible patterns which would indicate that some players have difficulty facing opponents with specific styles of play. For instance, a UTR 10.00 player who can never win against certain 9.00 players.

Several months have passed since the watershed event related above. Several more encounters between Players A and D have occurred, with the same result — except that now Player A is no longer silent; he has the confidence to respond appropriately when taunted, even if he hasn’t found a way to bring his best game to the court. His mental game is improving, but I have reason to question my own.

It wasn’t only my son and other players who were bullied, I realize. My wife and I have been bullied as well, in subtle ways, by Player D’s parents. And Player D’s older brother is clearly suffering… presumably because he didn’t achieve what his younger brother appears to be achieving. Player D is getting special treatment — in his family and in his federation — he doesn’t have to follow rules that apply to all other players; he doesn’t have to sign in on time, whereas other players are disqualified for the same offense.

In the culture where I live there is no redress: bullying is a normal part of life, practically institutionalized. So as a parent I must focus on object lessons and continue to use the teachable moments as best I can to help my children craft the tools they will need to survive and move beyond the bullying they will surely continue to face, in sport as in life.

So here’s a question: Can bullying contribute to a young player’s early success? In my short time as a tennis parent in this particular part of the world some of the most successful players I’ve seen have a tendency to be ugly to their opponents … to have the kinds of personalities that seem a natural fit for bullying. And these players have also been coddled by the federation. But I do know a few very successful young players who don’t have such personalities.

I imagine it takes a certain kind of mental toughness to be a bully… to bully a friend in pursuit of a goal, to not care what others think of your behavior. Mental toughness is clearly a goal for any player that aspires to serious competition. Is being taught to bully one path to mental toughness? I have encountered many tennis parents with “sensitive” children who have wondered aloud whether their children could learn to become “mean” while on court, and I know what they are after… they don’t want their children to show emotions that would give power to their opponents; they want their children to be insensitive to the emotions of the player across the net, at least during a match.

While there are many scholarly studies of personality and sport, it seems to me that the role of personality is under-appreciated in the early development of tennis players, at least from what I have observed. This is probably because parents who are new to the sport, unless they fall into an extraordinary coaching situation, are focusing on other things; they are certainly very much aware of their own children’s personality, but their primary concerns are whether their child enjoys the sport, whether they can absorb the training, and how they emotionally respond; they get pulled into vortex of tournaments before a course can be charted that takes their child’s personality into account.

It’s clear that bullying and being “mean” can’t always be taught. Player D’s older brother, Player M, was coached to bully his peer, Player A’s older brother, but bullying didn’t fit with Player M’s personality. For the moment, Player M seems to have given up on his own aspirations and settled into a role as a sparring partner for his younger brother. I can’t help but wonder whether, absent a successful younger brother and parents driven at all costs by the pursuit of Player D’s success, Player M would still be playing tennis. It’s a real shame, because Player M is still one of the better players in his age group; I can imagine that with patience instead of pressure a far more constructive path could have been pursued.

    Charles Allen

    Written by

    Tennis Parent, Ecological History, #dataviz, #DataVisualization, #sportsanalytics, #d3js