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Life

Champion one day, out the next

By: Mark Tronson
WBA Sports Writer for CTA
Monday, 21 June 2010, 5:58 (EST)
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No sooner had Margaret Court's interview with the Australian Missionary News IPTV been edited, than what she said came to pass.

The 1970 Grand Slam tennis champion and the person to have won more grand slam tournaments than any player to date said that tennis makes you humble, in that you can be a grand slam tennis champion and lose a game the next.
http://tv.bushorchestra.com/Professionals/videopages/margaret_court.html

Recently Rafael Nadal had won the French Open. He beat Robin Soderling in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, to his win fifth French Open final.

Then Spain's Feliciano Lopez halted the 25-match winning streak of Rafael Nadal with a 7-6 6-4 victory in the quarter-finals of the AEGON Championship.
http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12040_6201770,00.html

So there you have it. Margaret Court was spot on, not only by her own experience in the constant pressure of top tennis but we have a current example of this very thing, that of Rafael Nadal, from French Open champion and then done unceremoniously the following week.

What is more, is that this experience occurs over and over again in top sport. Obviously individual participant sports are prone to this such as motor racing drivers, golfers, track and field athletes to name but three generic sports.

Team sports too experience the same. One only has to look at the weekly AFL, NRL, Field Hockey, Rugby, Netball, Baskteball team results to see this phenomenon repeated over and over again.

This writer recalls that as the field hockey writer for the Illawarra Mercury (Wollongong) in the early 1970's, the first grade competition of the Illawarra and District Men's Hockey Association consisted of six clubs. The perennial grand final winners of the era Albion Park on this occasion defeated by the Master Builders team, who by mid season had still not earned one point in the competition table.

On this day however, it all came together for them and they put paid to the mighty Albion Park squad with a resounding victory and they thought they had solved their tactical issues. Illawarra men's hockey connoisseurs were abuzz with excitement with such remarkable news.

Alas, the following week, the mighty hunters Master Builders were up against a much more alert St Matthews Team, who had noted the previous week's result and put in place strategies to thwart such a result repeating itself. And sure enough, St Matthews gave the Master Builders a hockey lesson they were not soon to forget in annuls of the Illawarra and District Men's Hockey player's memories.

The phenomenon of being on top one day and being cast aside the next is not a new one either. Remember the Biblical story of Elijah when he took the priests of the false god Baal to a trial of fire upon the alter of sacrifice. Whatever the priests tried bought no fire.

Then Elijah upped the anti and had the entire alter soaked with water and finally he prayed the living God and we know the result. Yet, immediately after this resounding 'God' victory, Elijah was hiding and cowering away when he heard that the wicked Queen Jezebel had a contract out on him. Astonishing but true! Is the Bible true to life or what!


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