How to function under pressure

The answer will disappoint you

The one thing soccer players ask me when we chat is reliably a variation of: how do you function in a knockout system?

I made it sound like I know hundreds of soccer players and we chat all the time. I know two. Possibly three. But they really have all asked me the knockout question at a moment in time.

How do you function in a knockout system? In fact, it had never occurred to me that in a great number of team sports, you for the most part get a second chance. They are either competing in leagues like the Premier League or the Bundesliga where what matters most is consistency. You can lose a game or two, even tie a few (a collective sigh from all tennis players around the world - I hear you, friends), but if you win enough or tie enough you will be able to accomplish your goals in the end. Home and away ties are a safety net in tournaments, group stages another one. Heck, in basketball they play best-of-seven in the playoffs. You always have a chance to bounce back, to run down the clock, to scrape by.

In tennis, however, you don’t. You win, you go on, you lose, you go home. A mantra I choose to live by in my private life as well (whatever that means). Not only that, you also have to win that damned last point. No clock to be runneth down, as Shakespeare said - or was it Christopher Marlowe? We see it time and time again, even the best sometimes fail to do so.

all of my soccer friends

The reason why all of the (two or three) soccer players asked me about how to function in a knockout system is the few games that are played in a knockout format in soccer turn out to be the most important ones. The Champions League Final, the World Cup semifinals and so on. They hoped I would have an easy answer. A life hack possibly like the ones you can find on TikTok. HERE IS HOW YOU FERTILISE YOUR PLANTS WITH COFFEE GROUNDS. YOU’VE BEEN LOADING YOUR DISHWASHER ALL WRONG. These kind of things.

And I truly wish I could say that if you stood in moonlight dressed in black while drinking sparkling water holding a crystal you would automatically function under pressure. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Unfortunately, the only thing that makes you function under pressure is being exposed to pressure so often you don’t realise it is pressure in the first place.

When I started playing tournaments around the age of twelve I would regularly throw up before matches because I got so nervous. I would have stomach cramps for hours, feverishly sweating, a cold wet fist clutching my heart. I honestly had no idea it was just nerves. I was convinced the universe had conspired against me to render me impossibly ill every time I had to play a match. Well, the universe doesn’t care I exist (is what my therapist tells me weekly or as I like to call him my paid personal party pooper). I won my first two international tournaments in Austria after I entered an open qualifying which means everybody without a ranking can just show up and play. I won five matches - in qualifying alone. I won another five in the main draw. I then got a special exempt for the next tournament and won that one, too. After the third match in qualifying, I stopped throwing up. After the fifth, I stopped sweating. The pressure had become a daily routine, dissipated into the Austrian mountains.

*googles how to function under pressure*

The other week I held a speech about transformation and resilience in front of a bunch of CEOs. After the talk when I tried to escape to a bathroom one man grabbed me gently by the arm and said:

“Andrea, I have a question, how do you function under pressure?”

“Oh”, I said, “you just have to do it every day.”

And that was the time when I crushed a man’s soul in a grey conference room in front of thirty CEOs. I’m just kind of joking. I saw the light go out in those soft brown eyes. He wanted a life hack, I gave him a life task.

Maybe that’s why I have so few soccer friends. Correction: maybe that’s why I have so few friends. I should work on my positivity.

It is my theory that we see so many cramping soccer players in World Cups because the format of a knockout system overwhelms them. Carlos Alcaraz was worn down by cramps after the second set when he faced Novak Djokovic for the first time at a Grand Slam tournament. A few weeks later he beat Novak in five in the Wimbledon final. He had adjusted to the pressure. The French Open and Wimbledon are a few weeks apart meanwhile somewhere, a soccer player is counting down the four years between World Cups for another shot at not cramping.

The morning I woke up after my last professional match on tour I felt a thousand pounds lighter. It was a hot summer day in New York, my bed a boiling cauldron, the windows of my room already sweating. I grabbed my thighs, my stomach, my back, my shoulders. Still half asleep, wandering the narrow path of dream and reality, I thought I had shed a thousand pounds of muscle mass. However, it was only the pressure of a lifetime in tennis. I saw it fly out the window dynamically but from the corner of my boiling cauldron of a bed I thought I saw a sad look on its face. Farewell, my friend, we will see each other again.

Things that make me happy:

I saw the Luca Guadagnino’s tennis movie Challengers and it made me extremely happy. I will write about in length next week but in the meantime, go check out my review I wrote for The Guardian here: Challengers, a review

great headline, even better piece - LOL

Things that make me unhappy:

I had called three three-hour matches for Sky Germany from a stuffy studio over the course of some of the most beautiful spring days in Munich. So, it was only fair, I thought, to hope for a quick one yesterday night. But then Daniil Medvedev got injured and had to retire and I’m 90% sure I jinxed him. My therapist keeps telling me that I don’t have that kind of power but the evidence is pretty clear that I do. Sorry, Daniil.

If you haven’t done so yet, go see Challengers so we can talk about it together next week. Spice up your life with a sexy sports movie if eating churros gets your juices going (among other things). I personally can’t wait for next week!

Yours truly, Andrea