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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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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A Good Sign for Johnson

Not to keep harping on Dustin Johnson, but the profile in today’s New York Times about his summer of choking, made me think he has a real chance of being clutch and winning a major championship. The ruling that cost him a chance at a playoff on the last hole of the P.G.A. Championship – two penalty strokes for grounding his club in what few, including him, thought was a bunker - will be debated for quite some time. But as I said in this post, the bigger issue was him not controlling the moment. He choked on the tee box when he hit the drive that landed so far to the right in the first place. And in the Sunday Times story he said as much himself: “I should have never hit my driver.”

This is important for him. It shows he took responsibility for his mistake – and didn’t blame his loss on the bunker, the rules officials, or anything else. Failing to take responsibility is one of the most common reasons why people choke under pressure. Accepting it won’t make you clutch, but it will put you on the path to becoming better under pressure.

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The Trap Isn’t To Blame

Dustin Johnson lost his second major golf championship in the final round on Sunday, but this time the attention focused squarely on the rules official at the P.G.A. Championship who called Johnson for grounding his club in a sand trap. This is a no-no by the rules of golf, and Johnson was assessed a two-shot penalty – for touching the sand twice. Much of the talk centered on the call. Was it really a sand trap if fans are standing in it with you? Was this pretty pedantic call the best thing for a suffering sport, as Jason Gay asked?

What no one has talked about is Johnson  failed in the clutch for the second time this year. He choked coming down the 18th hole, and even though it was not as spectacular as how he choked at the U.S. Open in June, it had the same outcome: he lost.

Think of it this way. After rolling in a long birdie at the 17th hole, Johnson was leading the P.G.A. Championship by one stroke on the last tee. The smart play would have been to hit a club that would have put his tee shot into the fairway and get out of the hole with an unexciting par and the victory. This was what Lucas Glover did when he won the U.S. Open last year.  He hit a six-iron off the tee and a nine-iron to the green, where he two-putted for victory. Johnson choked right off the tee by hitting a Phil Mickelson-like drive into the gallery. The next shot flew over the green. The one after that came up short. Then he missed his par putt weakly to the right for a bogey – before the two shot penalty. What mattered was he did not control the situation, which is one of my definitions for choking at the highest level. Johnson had the ability to par that hole with more conservative shots but he did not do it. The pressure got to him.

This may not be any consolation for Johnson, but Bubba Watson choked just as badly on the last hole of the playoff: he tried to hit a hero shot that ended up in the water. (That he thinks the shot was the right one is troubling for his future chances at major tournament victories.) What did the winner, Martin Kaymer, do? He had a worse lie than Watson, and after watching him smack his shot into the water, Kaymer chipped his ball out about 20 yards, hit his next onto the green and two-putted for a bogey and the victory. It wasn’t a glorious finish. But it was a victory. And under pressure, you don’t get style points: you either succeed or fail.

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