Paul J. Sullivan

The Wall Street Journal Praises Clutch

Mr. Sullivan has sallied forth with notepad and pen in hand to tell individual stories… [He] takes his examples from sports, business, the military and the stage. He explains right away that there are five traits that help people pull off a clutch performance…

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Can A Loss Be Clutch?

David Price looked completely prepared for the pressure of  tonight’s do-or-die game of the American League Division Series. The Tampa Bay Rays pitcher has a starring role in Clutch, but what I describe in my book was a different situation: relief pitching in a tight game when he was still a rookie. Tonight, Price, who started this year’s All Star Game, was throwing against another ace in  Texas Rangers pitcher Cliff Lee, a much-more experienced ballplayer. The two went head-to-head early on, with Price looking stronger – more strikeouts, greater ease on the mound. But then Price’s teammates started to make bad plays. The worst was a botched throw from home plate to third on a stolen base: the ball flew into the outfield and the runner came home. So did anyone choke? The game was completely pressure packed but when it came to pitching the two men were equally clutch. They maintained their focus and discipline. It was the fielders and batters who failed the Rays, or save the Rangers.

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Textbook Clutch

Roy Halladay’s no-hitter tonight was a quintessential clutch performance – but not in the way many sports fans think about. Most fans use the term too broadly. In Clutch, I set the bar higher and define clutch more precisely: it’s the ability to do what you can do normally but under pressure. The player who hits the game-winning home run is not clutch – there is too much luck involved in that. The great pitcher who wins the playoff game could be clutch. But Halladay’s performance tonight has set the standard for textbook clutch performance. After all, he threw a no-hitter in May when the only pressure on him was self-imposed – no small feat, mind you. But tonight, he repeated that under the intensity of the playoffs. It would be foolish to say that throwing a no-hitter in the regular season is ‘normal conditions’, by my definition, but he threw one and then repeated this incredible, pressure-packed feat under even greater pressure. Now that Tiger Woods is off the clutch stage, Halladay has made his case for being the most clutch athlete of our time.

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Clutch Is Not Mental

One of the lines in Clutch that has gotten a bit of a chuckle from readers comes at Roger Clemens’ expense. I interviewed him in 2004 and walked away thinking: you can either have blond highlights in your hair or you can be an arrogant jerk, but you shouldn’t be allowed to have highlights and be a jerk. The anecdote was one of many illustrating the flaccid thinking behind claims that great athletes – and top performers – were mentally superior to the rest of us. I have met enough of them to know that isn’t the case.

Now come two sports pieces that make my point. In The New York Times, Larry Dorman writes about Matt Kuchar and how he has gone from being off the PGA Tour to the hottest player around in just four years. This quote, in particular, captures how the five traits of being clutch help make somebody better under pressure:

He had an objective in mind, and he was going to achieve that objective. When he was done practicing, he was going to be better.

In other words, he was focused, showed discipline, adapted when things went badly, and was always present. He was not thinking of his fall from grace or how great his comeback would be: he was just getting better.

In baseball, there is a story in the Wall Street Journal about Troy Tulowitzki, the short stop for the Colorado Rockies. It begins by quoting people who marvel at his ability under pressure. This type of hagiography is what I wrote against in my book. Being clutch is not the realm of the gods and has little to do with the mental toughness of the athlete. But midway through one of his coaches explains why Tulowitzki has always been so good coming down the stretch:

Ken Ravizza, who worked with Mr. Tulowitzki when he was a college player at Long Beach State, said the shortstop had a precocious ability to forget his failures, maintain control, and focus relentlessly on the next pitch. “It’s always been effortless for him,” Mr. Ravizza says.

And that’s clutch – it’s not the previous at-bat; it’s focus on what you’re doing now.

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