JohnFMurray.com

ABC Good Morning America – Television – What Causes Elite Athletes to Choke? Some Top Sports Stars Just Can’t Seal the Deal – Friday night, Sasha Cohen was majestic in a no-pressure exhibition, but the picture the world will remember is her falling with the gold medal on the line.

Also see: Tennis Week Magazine on Dr. Murray’s Selection to Marquis Who’s Who in America 2006

With Cohen it has happened so many times before.

“How she could not know what she’s facing and that everyone’s saying, ‘She choked every single time. Will she choke again?’” said USA Today sports columnist, Christine Brennan.

Mind Games?

Cohen is in elite company. Michelle Kwan dominated figure skating for a decade with five world championships and nine national titles, but no Olympic Gold.

“When the athletes come to the Olympic Games, it is rarely about the muscles anymore,” Brennan said. “It is all about the muscles between the ears.”

If anyone knows how Sasha Cohen feels, it is the Buffalo Bills. In the 1990s they went to the Super Bowl four times and lost each time. Scott Norwood’s 1991 failed field goal kick will forever be synonymous with “wide right.”

“Typically the athlete will think too much about the implications of performance and what it means,” said sports psychologist, Dr. John Murray. “They tend to think too much. And the word choking reflects that, the idea of choking on thoughts.”

Scott Hoch was consistently ranked among the top professional golfers. But he never captured a major championship. His closest call came at the 1989 Master’s: He came within inches of victory, but missed. He has forever been known as “Hoch the choke.”

Silver medalist Cohen says you can’t try to please the world ” just yourself.

“I don’t need to be validated by scores or marks or whatever,” she said. “I know that when I skate, when I skate my very best, I am very happy.”

But there is hope for the bastion of bridesmaids. Look no further than speed skater Dan Jansen, who battled falls and personal tragedy starting in 1984” three Olympics with no Gold. He finally won in 1994.

Dr. Murray Discusses Sports Choking on ABC’s Good Morning America

The Palm Beach, Florida-based sport performance psychologist is the author of “Smart Tennis: How to Play and Win the Mental Game” and the soon-to-be released “Palm Beach Narcissism Diet”.

Dr. Murray, who has worked with more than 50 ATP and WTA Tour pros, may be best known in tennis circles for helping Spadea bounce back from the longest losing streak in ATP Tour history to the highest ranking of his career.

Spadea, rarely a stranger to adversity, suffered 21 straight losses before resurrecting his career. Spadea claimed his first ATP Tour title in Scottsdale in 2004, beating James Blake and Andy Roddick en route to victory. In his comeback, Spadea rose from No. 229 to a career-best No. 18 in the world.

“My rise will again be accomplished with help from my sport performance psychologist, John F. Murray, who formerly helped me back from my longest losing streak,” Spadea told Tennis Week in an interview last fall.

LAST-UPDATE: January 16, 2006
Murray, John Francis
SOURCE: Who’s Who in America, 60th Edition
LENGTH: 168 words

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Married to Charlotte Greenman, June 14, 1997; 1 child, Caroline.
GENDER Male
BIRTH-DATE November 30, 1961
BIRTHPLACE Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
ADDRESS Office, Ste 339-J, 340 Royal Poinciana Way, Palm Beach, FL, 33480

CAREER INFORMATION

OCCUPATION 2920 – psychologist
POSITIONS HELD pvt. practice clin. and sport performance psychologist, John F. Murray , PhD, Palm Beach, Fla., 1999-

EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION

BA, Loyola U., La., 1983; M, U. Fla., 1992; MS, U. Fla., 1995; Ph.D., U. Fla., , 1998

OTHER INFORMATION

CERTIFICATES Lic. Psychologist Fla., 2000

CREATIVE WORKS Author: Smart Tennis: How to Play and Win the Mental Game; creator (performance index for football teams) Mental Performance Index (MPI); prodr.(radio talk show host): (sport psychology radio program) Mental Equipment Radio; author: (performance checklist for tennis players) Tennis Mind-Body Checklist

AWARDS Post-Doctoral fellow, Fla. Internat. U., 1998-99

MEMBERSHIPS Mem.: APA (assoc.), Fla. Psychol. Assn. Palm Beach County Chpt. (asso c.; pres. 2002-02), Alpha Delta Gamma Epsilon Chpt. (life; treas. 198 1-81, Most Valuable Athlete Epsilon Chpt. 1982)

INTERESTS Avocations: travel, tennis, reading, writing, pub. speaking
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: February 8, 2006

TENNIS WEEK ON DR. MURRAY’S SELECTION TO MARQUIS WHO’S WHO.

Not that it makes any difference to the speed skaters, biathletes, skeleton sliders and skiers all busy pitching woo in the Italian Alps.

MIA HAMM (soccer) and NOMAR GARCIAPARRA (baseball) Married: 2003. Hamm, one of the greatest female soccer players ever, led the U.S. team to gold in the 2004 Olympics, then retired. Garciaparra, who was a first-round pick for the Red Sox in 1994 after playing for Georgia Tech. He signed with the L.A. Dodgers last year. His first name is his father’s name, Ramon, spelled backwards.

STEFFI GRAF and ANDRE AGASSI (tennis) Married: 2001. Two children. The ultimate love match in the world of tennis between the former No. 1 woman and former No. 1 man.

Olympic gold medal gymnasts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci married in 1996. More matchups of top athletes.

Cupid is working overtime in Turin, where ice dancers Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov are the current poster couple for Olympic romance. They met on the Internet in the summer of 2000, each seeking a skating partner. He flew to Denver from his native Russia, took one look and sang “God Bless America.” They began making beautiful music together very shortly thereafter.

“It felt right, and we didn’t care what anybody else thought,” Gregory told the Los Angeles Daily News.

But the course of true love never does run smooth. Especially if the lovers are too busy running wind sprints to run a household.

“I know this from experience,” said John F. Murray, a Palm Beach, Fla., sports psychologist. “Professional athletes need a lot of support, they need somebody at home, somebody supporting them emotionally, somebody to get the details taken care of. If you have two prima donnas, how are you going to manage that? It seems like it’s double the challenge. One of them almost has to play the support role.”

That’s why marriage between world-class athletes is rare, and the tennis romance between Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi seems the exception rather than the rule.

Even under the best of circumstances, when one half of the couple is willing to play second fiddle, the life of a professional athlete is hard on relationships. Baseball rosters, for instance, are littered with home-run kings who struck out at home.

The statistics, according to Gena James Pitts, can be depressing.

Some 80 percent of athletes are divorced and in debt by the end of their careers, she says. Pitts of Alpharetta is the wife of former Falcons player Mike Pitts and creator of Professional Sports Wives Magazine, a publication dedicated to the spouses of professional U.S. athletes. She says few of those wives are athletes themselves. “There are a lot of wives who have dropped their careers or their aspirations to support their husbands’ career.”

A notable exception is golfing champion Nancy Lopez and infielder (and Georgia native) Ray Knight, who married in 1982 and are the only married couple in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. Knight and Lopez continued to compete during the 1980s. Lopez won tournaments even as their three children were born, and Knight hit the winning run for the Mets in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series. They settled in Albany, Knight’s hometown.

In the more familiar scenario, one member of the couple is likely to give up competing professionally shortly after wedding bells ring.

For example, soccer superstar Mia Hamm and Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra married in November 2003, and the following spring, she announced she’d retire at the end of the year. Hamm went out with a bang, leading the women’s soccer team to gold at the 2004 Olympics. Garciaparra signed with the Dodgers after last season.

Similarly, Graf and Agassi married two years after Graf retired.

Then there are the careers that get put on hold as marriage and children take precedence over training and world travel. Buford resident Steve Weber is a top amateur bowler. His wife, Beverly, was a rising regional bowling star when they lived in New Orleans. As his career took off, she stayed home with their daughter and got a nursing license for the steady income.

“All the couples that I know of, especially the ones who have kids, usually one of them has to make sacrifice of competing less,” Steve said. “Nine times out of 10, it’s the wife that does it.”

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed their St. Bernard Parish home, the couple moved to Atlanta with Kayla, now 18.

“I’m happy standing behind him, to be honest with you,” said Beverly, speaking by telephone from New Jersey, where her husband was competing this week in the U.S. Open. “I enjoy it. I like both worlds; I like to be able to stay home and do things with my daughter and have a normal life, but I also like to travel with him and see different places.”

Another pair of bowlers, Chris and Lynda Barnes of Flower Mound, Texas, manage to collect strikes without sending their union into the gutter. She was the No. 1 amateur last year; he was the No. 2 pro.

She had to travel 100 days out of the year, and in the meantime, they had twin toddlers at home.

“We called in all the troops,” Chris said. “My mom in Kansas, her mom in California. Each took a turn.”

Chris suggested that, despite the challenges, the upside of sharing a career with a spouse is the increased ability to empathize through shared experience.

“We have a level of understanding that probably doesn’t happen between too many couples,” he said.

Also, he said, “It’s cool to watch her beat the best players in the world.”

It wasn’t just another wipeout. When Lindsey Kildow crashed while practicing in the Winter Olympics’ fastest event Monday, the world winced at the slow-motion TV images of a skier writhing, arms and legs thrashing as she skidded at 50 mph down a mountainside.
Yet, she may bounce back to ski in the same event today. On the same slope.

How could she do it?

Sports psychologists say the normal rules of motivation and fear don’t apply to Kildow, the Burnsville 21-year-old who is the top-ranked American downhill skier.

Those who know her best, including her father and her former coach, say she will ski today unless her body fails her — they’re sure she won’t be held back by her mind.

“I hope she will face this with clinical rationality,” said her father, Alan Kildow, himself a former national junior champion skier. “But prudence in downhill skiing is probably an oxymoron.”

Team USA decided late Tuesday to reserve a spot in today’s competition for Kildow. Kildow and officials will decide before the race whether she can compete.

The spectacular wipeout occurred Monday, when Kildow was taking her second training run for the women’s downhill in San Sicario, Italy. Women whip down the two-mile course, which is about as steep as an indoor stairway, hitting top speeds of about 70 mph.

In midrun, Kildow crossed her skis at the top of a jump. She twisted in midair, landed on her back and flailed to a stop in what looked to be a horrific accident-conclusion. She was airlifted to a hospital, where X-rays revealed no broken bones but a severe bruise on her hip.
Her father saw the news of the crash at 6:30 a.m. Monday on an Internet site.

He was concerned but not panicked. “I have seen her take very nasty spills at very high speeds,” Kildow said. “I don’t think this will affect her psychologically.”

Most people, of course, would recoil from an experience akin to being pushed out of a speeding car onto a snow-covered highway, especially if it had happened two days earlier. But most people don’t have the personalities of world-class athletes, experts say.

“Look at Evel Knievel. What made him keep coming back after all those broken bones?” asked Dr. John F. Murray, a nationally known expert in sports psychology in Palm Beach, Fla.

“It’s called resilience. We are defined by what we do when things go wrong, not what happens when things go right.”

Erich Sailer agreed. “It has to come from within yourself,” said Sailer, who coached Lindsey Kildow at Buck Hill ski area in Burnsville and is a member of the National Skiing Hall of Fame.

He said a coach can improve most athletes’ performances, but not to the Olympic level. Olympic athletes have the physical abilities and, more important, the desire to excel that can’t be taught.

Olympic athletes see pain differently. “The worst thing we can do is try to put ourselves in their heads. These are not average Joes,” said Greg Cylkowski, who helps improve athletes’ performance at Athletic Achievements in St. Paul.

Olympians live for thrills most of us will never experience, he said.
“It might seem amazing to us that she’d come back to try this again,” Cylkowski said. “But it’s amazing to people like her how you and I can live with consistent routines every day.”

Athletes like Kildow can concentrate on the task — to the exclusion of fear and other distractions. “They live on the edge. You lose that edge, and you become just another fast skier,” Cylkowski said.

Many athletes, from mountain climbers to auto racers, know fatal mistakes can happen instantly — and adjust their attitudes accordingly.
“When she gets to that starting gate, she has to start from scratch, mentally,” said Mike Dahlberg of Minneapolis, who has 35 years’ experience climbing mountains.

Dahlberg said the ability to deliberately avoid thinking about danger is common to almost everyone, to some degree. “We have to commute, but how often do you see a horrific crash on the interstate? When you witness that, it shakes you up for a day or two, but you still go on,” he said.

“You have to tell yourself: If it was legitimate to do this yesterday, then it’s legitimate to do it today — regardless of any injuries,” Dahlberg said.

Athletes notoriously avoid visiting their injured colleagues because it reminds them of their own vulnerability, Cylkowski said.

It’s like soldiers facing death in Iraq, Cylkowski said. “You might think, ‘What possesses a guy to volunteer for that?’ ” Soldiers, like athletes, have learned to put other considerations before personal danger.

“They know about death. They just think it isn’t going to happen to them,” he said.

Of course, athletes are well aware of the glory of winning an Olympic event.

“This is their moment to climb Mount Everest. I wouldn’t call it ‘reckless abandon,’ but sometimes there is a disregard for their future,” Cylkowski said.

Said Murray: “I applaud her for it. She is not letting this one fall destroy her dream. She might be able to compete in one Olympics, or two — then the chance is gone.”

One minute she’s not an Olympics contender. The next minute she is.

It’s a real lurch to go from backstage to center stage, said Duffy Spencer, a life coach and business consultant in Westbury. In a split second, she says, Emily assumed the status of top-level contender, and she now has to internalize that role — and fast.

How can she do that? Here’s the advice from performance and success coaches.

For starters, they said, it’s essential that she focus on the positive. Coaches say that a performance often reflects how the athlete has been thinking, so Emily needs to steer clear of the negative, such as the perception that she’s starting at a deficit because of her late arrival.

James Loehr, performance psychologist and chief executive of the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., said he would counsel her to aim in a direction of excitement, adventure, even gratitude to Michelle Kwan for knowing when to step aside — those, as well as thoughts that reflect the positive element of “going in fresh.”

Laura Berman Fortgang, a life coach in Verona, N.J., would help her “go within” to focus on what she can control, not what she can’t. That would rule out the anticipation of judges’ reactions, comparisons to her sister Sarah and media reports.

Psychologically, Emily is coming from the perfect place, said John Murray, a performance psychologist in Palm Beach. That’s because since Jan. 27, the day her potential spot on the Olympic roster was given to Michelle Kwan, she hasn’t been under any “negative pressure” as a result of being in the spotlight. Now that pressure will begin, and he said the key for Emily is to go in with an attitude of excitement. “It’s hard to be tense,” he said, “when you’re having fun.”

-Hard Work/Discipline/Effort
-Passion/Joy/Fun
-Resilience/Bouncing Back from Adversity
-Focus/Concentration
-Confidence/Self-Belief
-Energy Control/Emotional Management
-Goal Setting
-Imagery/Visualization
-Performance vs. Outcome

“I look forward to having Dr. Murray at the club. We have put lots of
energy into the physical aspect of the game and we tend to forget about the psychological. This is a great opportunity for our players to gain insight on how to improve characteristics such as confidence, hard work and concentration. Parents will also get some education on how they can assist their children and their mental prep. It will also be great for the players and parents to get an experts view on the “performance v. outcome” issue that seems to be a big issue in south Florida soccer.”

John Ramos, Director of Coaching and Player Development, Plantation Eagles Soccer Club. John is a former professonal soccer player and Sun Sentinel’s Boys Soccer Coach of the Year with a 56 game winning streak and 67-9-7 career record.

Yes, the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl. Yes, there were some questionable calls by the officials. Yes, they all seemed to go against the Seahawks. But if you take a step back and look at things objectively, it wasn’t quite as bad as it probably seemed when you were throwing Cheetos at your TV on Sunday.

Earlier this week, the NFL defended its Super Bowl officials, and Seahawks fans everywhere muttered a collective, “What the … ?”

The blame game can be caused by something psychologists refer to as “attribution.”

“Nobody likes to lose,” said Dr. John F. Murray, a clinical and sport performance psychologist in Palm Beach, Fla. “If you can find an alternative explanation that doesn’t include your team, you’re going to use it to protect your self esteem. It makes it easier to say, ‘Our team was not bad, but we got jobbed.’ ”

It’s not just Seahawks faithful who have a hard time with the league’s statement that the game was “properly officiated.” Newspaper columnists, TV personalities and other NFL players have criticized the Super Bowl officiating ad nauseam this week.

Critics point not only to the Super Bowl but to the rest of the playoffs as evidence of shoddy officiating. The most obvious play went against the Pittsburgh Steelers in a divisional playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts. Troy Polamalu had an apparent interception overturned after the play was reviewed, and the league later admitted it got the play wrong.

It would seem problematic for a league and its fans and impartial observers to be so far apart on the topic of officiating, but the NFL doesn’t think it has a problem.

“It’s not unusual. It’s part of sports,” said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. “This happened to be the Super Bowl, so it has been magnified. But it is a very normal part of sports. Our officials are doing a great job. The quality of the officiating, based on the feedback we get from our clubs, has been outstanding over the last couple of years.”

Every time controversy happens on a big stage — and this was the biggest of all — people scream for change. Suddenly, the league needs full-time officials. Suddenly, the officials are too old to keep up with a high-speed game. Suddenly, the fix is in.

None of this is new to the NFL. The league has heard the complaints before.

“You’re never going to have everyone happy with every call,” said Aaron Pointer, a former NFL official who lives in Tacoma and works for the league as a game-day observer. “It’s the same thing you see in every sport. That goes with the territory. You’re never going to please all the fans. That’s an impossibility.”

As for making officials full-time employees, Pointer doesn’t think it would make a difference.

“You can make officials in the NFL full time, but it won’t correct anyone’s judgment,” he said. “There’s a human element involved, and when that’s involved there are going to be some questions in judgment. All of these guys know the rules. Spending more time on that won’t make a difference.”

NFL officials work 15 games per season, not including playoffs. First-year officials make about $3,000 per game, while veterans make upward of $5,000. The top-graded officials during the course of the season are selected to work the playoffs, where the pay increases to approximately $12,000 per game. The playoff officials are then rated on their playoff and season performances to determine who works the Super Bowl. Those officials are paid about $15,000.

Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL all employ full-time officials, but those sports play substantially more games. Besides, most NFL officials will tell you it is pretty much a full-time gig.

“I think ‘full time’ is a misnomer,” said Jim Tunney, an NFL official for 31 years before retiring in 1991. “If it means that’s all you do, then they’re not full time. Almost all these guys have other jobs, but they still do football-related stuff every day.

“Besides, ‘full time’ doesn’t make you perfect. Baseball umpires are full time, and if you watched the World Series last year, mistakes were made. It’s a human game. Players make mistakes, coaches make mistakes, officials make mistakes.”

People criticizing officials like to play the age card as well. The thought is that middle-aged men have a hard time keeping up with the speed of the game and are missing calls as a result. Of course, if younger officials were brought in, critics would start to complain about a lack of experience. Current NFL officials need at least 10 years of experience in major college football or other professional leagues, such as the Arena League.

“I felt like I was better in the last two years than I ever was,” said Tunney, who retired when he was 61. “As I watch the games, I see guys going down the sideline with guys who are 30 years younger than them. When you get to the point when you’re not keeping up, you should get out, and most of them do. All of them are in really good shape.”

And don’t get these guys started on corruption.

Pointer points out that officials, like players, are not allowed to gamble on sports ” not just football, but any sport. They are subject to random drug tests; cannot drink alcohol the day before a game; and, during the season, cannot go to Las Vegas or other cities that allow gambling.

“I couldn’t go see my sisters perform when they played in Vegas during the season,” said Pointer, brother of the Pointer Sisters. “And I had to notify the NFL that I was going to Las Vegas to see them perform when the season was over.

“I can assure Seahawks fans that there is no conspiracy.”

So why was the officiating so terrible? Well, it might not have been quite as atrocious as you remember. Aside from the illegal-block call on Matt Hasselbeck — which no one seems willing to defend — an argument can be made for each controversial call.

In the days following Super Bowl XL, everyone has been so eager to rip the officiating that a few facts have changed along the way. And that phenomenon was not just limited to fans.

Media members with no ties to Seattle have exaggerated, and in some cases just been wrong, describing plays such as the Darrell Jackson pass-interference call.

One writer said back judge Bob Waggoner threw the flag on Jackson after signaling a touchdown, which he didn’t. Several others have said he hesitated for several seconds and threw the flag after complaints from safety Chris Hope. Watching a replay at full speed shows Waggoner reaching for his flag within one second of Jackson making the catch.

It’s also easy when blaming the officials to forget calls that went against the Steelers, such as a Jerramy Stevens drop that might have actually been a fumble. Had the play been ruled a fumble, linebacker James Farrior almost certainly would have recovered for the Steelers.

Richard Crowley, a California psychologist who works with athletes, says blaming the officials is just a way to cope with loss.

“When there’s a death or a loss, someone has to be the fall guy,” he said. “You have to get mad at somebody; it’s human nature. ‘Someone has to take responsibility for our team not winning.’

“After enough time goes by, however, you lick your wounds and you slowly move on.”

Objective

Define a decisive and attainable objective for every military operation.

Offensive

Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.

Mass

Apply sufficient force to achieve the objective.

Economy of Force

Focus the right amount of force on the key objective, without wasting force on secondary objectives.

Maneuver

Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power.

Unity of Command

For every objective, there must be a unified effort and one person responsible for command decisions.

Security

Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.

Surprise

Strike the enemy at a time and/or place and in a manner for which he is unprepared.

Simplicity

Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders.
(Officers in the U.S. Military sometimes use the acronym “MOUSE MOSS” to remember the first letters of these nine principles.)

Principles of War is also a book published in 1969 for the Japan Self-Defense Forces. It outline the basic military principles and startegies by which the Japanese army was to operate. The book is used for most military exams in Japan. The book backs up all military principles with historical examples.