Playing Free

The anxiety started four days before the tournament. Not about playing. I love playing. It was about partners.

Mixed doubles and men's doubles. Two different partners relying on me to show up at 4.0 level and not collapse when the score gets tight. In casual play, nobody cares if you sail one into the net. You laugh, you reset, you play the next point. In a tournament, every missed shot lands on someone else's scorecard too. I could feel that weight building all week.

Here's the thing I couldn't solve: I could drill. I could hit a hundred third-shot drops. I could work on my backhand until muscle memory took over. But I had absolutely no way to practice being calm under pressure. You can't simulate the feeling of being down 8-10 in a game to 11 with your partner watching you serve. Not on a Tuesday afternoon with nobody keeping score.

So I had a preparation gap. The physical game, I could train. The mental game, I just... showed up and hoped.

The science of choking

Sian Beilock at the University of Chicago spent years studying exactly this problem. Her research on choking under pressure (Choke, 2010) found something counterintuitive: the athletes who choke aren't the ones who don't care. They're the ones who care too much and start trying to consciously control what should be automatic. Beilock and Carr (2001, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General) showed that skilled golfers actually performed worse when asked to pay attention to their swing mechanics. The attention undid years of automaticity. Bob Rotella has been telling golfers and athletes exactly this for decades: trust is a skill, and the conscious mind is its worst enemy.

That's what I was doing. Caring so much about not letting my partners down that I was getting in my own way. The skill was there. The interference was coming from somewhere else entirely.

Something to do about it

A week before the tournament, I went into Neuralingual and typed something like: "I am an elite pickleball player. I play free, I'm calm under pressure in tournaments, I help my partner perform at their best." I think it was rougher than that. Luckily you don't have to get it perfect when you write those intents.

NL generated 31 affirmations across three groupings: playing free, composure under pressure, and being a good partner. A few that I keep hearing:

• "I trust my hands. They know what to do."
• "I am becoming someone the big points don't rattle."
• "My calm gives my partner permission to play free."

That last one hit differently than the others. I'd gone in worried about letting my partners down. NL came back with a reframe: my composure wasn't just for me. It was a gift to the person standing next to me. It doesn't say "I don't let my partner down." It says my steadiness actively helps them.

I listened maybe 8 or 10 times over the week. Walking my greyhound Yula. Before sleep a few times. In the hot tub. Not a huge dose. But enough that the phrases started showing up uninvited during actual play. Not as conscious thoughts. More like a background permission to stop second-guessing.

The tournament

Even before the tournament I noticed something had shifted. I was more willing to rely on my training than my head. That phrase about trusting my hands kept surfacing mid-rally. I wasn't thinking about technique. I was just playing.

The tournament came along, and I would like to say I won gold, but nope, nothing that miraculous. We went 3 and 3 in mixed and 2 and 3 in men's.

But here's what I keep coming back to: we laughed. In a tournament. Under pressure. My partners would agree, we were strongly competitive in every match. We played free even when it was tight.

We laughed. That's not nothing.

Beyond pickleball

I think the affirmations helped in the matches. But maybe more importantly, they helped in the days before the matches. I had anxiety about the tournament. Specifically about letting my partners down. And I had no tool for that. You can't drill away worry. You can't run laps until the fear of failure goes away.

What NL gave me was something to do with the anxiety instead of just sitting in it. Not eliminate it. I don't think that's how any of this works. But channel it. Give it somewhere to go.

I think that pattern extends well beyond pickleball. We all have things coming up that produce anxiety. Presentations. Difficult conversations. Medical appointments. Job interviews. Whatever yours is. Most people prepare the slides, practice the talking points, run through the logistics. But the worry loop running underneath? They just endure it and hope it doesn't leak through on the day.

At least with this you have something to do. And it might help.