The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

by W. Timothy Gallwey

If someone plays bad golf, it comes somehow to mean that he is not quite as worthy of respect, his own or others’, as he would be if he played well. If he is the club champion, he is considered a winner, and thus a more valuable person in our society. It then follows that the intelligent, beautiful, and competent tend to regard themselves as better people. When love and respect depend on winning or doing well in a competitive society, it is inevitable (since every winner requires a loser and every top performance many inferior ones) that there will be many people who feel a lack of love and respect. Of course, these people will try hard to win the respect they lack, and the winners will try equally hard not to lose the respect they have won. In this light, it is not difficult to see why playing well has come to mean so much to us. But who said that I am to be measured by how well I do things? In fact, who said that I should be measured at all? Who indeed?