Book of the Week: "The Champion's Mind" by Jim Afremow

We love champions. We marvel at the likes of Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods. People who have mastered their craft and excelled at the highest level. But what really makes someone like Tom Brady different than a Cam Newton? Or a Tiger Woods excel at a higher level than Sergio Garcia - their primes? Both athletes in each scenario are professional athletes, dedicating absorbent amounts of time and energy to their craft. 

What separates them is their mind. The exceptional champions have a stoic mind that allows them to shutout the negative and past failed performances and move forward towards greater greatness.

Imagine you're playing in the U.S. Open, and you have a four foot putt on 18 to win your first tournament. There are three parallel universes you can be in. In the Bronze universe, you are too excited; in the Silver, you are anxiously worried; and the Gold universe, you are calm and focused. 

In the Bronze universe, is where the term "scoreboard-watching" comes from. You know all you have to do is make this four-foot putt and you win the championship. You get so excited because a four-foot putt is a makable putt and making it for the win will put you in the limelight. But this excitement comes with a cost because you forget one key concept: YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO MAKE THE PUTT. 

With your adrenaline high with excitement, you may not go through or rush through your pre-shot routine and then hit the ball too hard and it lips out or runs five feet by the hole. 

The Silver universe is equally problematic too. As you're approaching the 18th green and see that you only have a four-footer for par, you begin to get nervous and thinking that if you miss this putt it'll be the end of the world. The belief that people will look at you in disappointment if you miss this four-footer. 

This negative way of thinking is raising your adrenaline. You're afraid of missing the putt that you become so tight that you stab at the ball and it roles a foot short of the hole.  

The Gold universe is where you want to be. (It is equivalent of being in the high-rent district of Krevlonia* as opposed to the favelas which is more synonymous of the Silver universe.) In Gold you're not thinking about the end result. All that is in your mind is the process and concentrating on executing what you can do physically instead of thinking about what it all means. You're living in the moment. "The Precious Present." 

And guess what? The ball goes in the hole in a high probability of situations. 

Being in the Gold universe is paramount for champions and high-caliber athletes. Former Harvard men's swimmer Schuyler Bailar highlights this in a Ted Talk at Johns Hopkins University. At one meet, Schuyler didn't have a great warm-up and really didn't know if he could continue to compete. He was falling into the Silver universe, but at that moment he caught himself and rebounded. He went step by step. And only controlled the things he could control. 

The things he was able to control were: getting up on the starting block, doing a dive when the starter blew the whistle, upon entering the water doing a pull out and once he resurfaced would take a stroke. From there he did that same thing. Taking one more stroke until he finished the race. 

Not trying attempting to do too many things in moment is what separates the great players from the merely good players. Thinking about Game 2 of the 2013 ALCS, the Red Sox were trailing the Tigers in 5-1 in the bottom of the eighth inning. All game the Sox were unable to muster much offense against the Tigers second ace of the staff Max Scherzer. They finally got their chance in the eighth inning when the Tigers bullpen door opened up. 

It wasn't long after until the bases were packed and David Ortiz stepping to the plate. We all know what happened after that. An easy swing on a first-pitch change-up sent the ball sailing over the bullpen wall and the iconic image of a diving Torii Hunter to tie the ballgame. The Sox went on to win and tie the series, but we're focusing on Ortiz here. 

His entire career Ortiz was known for his late game heroics. It's not an easy position to be in, but he thrived on the situation. In those moments, like in the eighth inning of Game 2 of the 2013 ALCS or Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, Ortiz was living in the Gold universe. 

Another player that comes to mind who has always lived in the Gold universe is the guy who called Foxborough home for 20 years: Tom Brady. All his career - going back to his college days at Michigan, Brady always seemed to be the guy that was called upon to bail his team out of trouble. But the one game that everyone talks about as his greatest comeback is Super Bowl LI that give him his fifth ring. 

The Falcons dominated the first three quarters of the game and in the process made Brady look like the aging quarterback he was. (Remember Max Kellerman's "Cliff?" tweet after Alford's interception?") Leading 28-3 with eight and half minutes left in the third, the Falcons looked poised to win their first Super Bowl in franchise history. 

In fact no one was actually believing Atlanta was going to lose, but somehow they did. And that somehow was the the mind of champion. There was still time left in the game and that was eternity for Brady. In football there is no 25-point play, so that meant only one thing, they had to take it one play at a time, one down at time and, eventually, one score at time. When they had to they settled for field goals and, on the defensive side, prevented the Falcons from adding to their lead. 

Taking it one play at a time eventually led the Patriots to complete the comeback and finding the endzone in overtime. 

* - fictional country named for a fellow golfer friend that we created. Here's the crest: