Rory McIlroy: A case of Performance Anxiety
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What is anxiety?
For anyone who watched the Maters golf it will always be remembered for Rory McIlroy managing to clinch defeat from the jaws of victory. His poor performance near the end of the tournament could be explained by performance anxiety, an issue prominent in the sport psychology literature and one that athletes should look to prevent and control.
Anxiety, in relation to sporting performance, is typically divided into state and trait, with state anxiety being the given level of anxiety in a particular situation (e.g. McIlroy attempting to putt on the first and missing) and trait anxiety relating to a persons (e.g. McIlroy) stable ongoing anxiety level inherent within that persons 'make-up' and thus exists without the need for a specific stimulus (e.g. having to take a putt) to exist (Singh, 2008).
It is likely that McIlroy's trait anxiety is relatively low, as he is a top ranked professional player and, although only 21, is used to competing in large tournaments (he represented Europe at last years Ryder Cup). Therefore his poor performance is likely attributable to increases in state anxiety.
Anxiety Theories
Early theories of anxiety and arousal revolved around Spence and Spence's (1966) Drive Theory, which asserted that a linear relationship between anxiety and performance existed i.e. an increase in anxiety and arousal led to an increase in performance. However numerous athletes can remember times when they were overly-aroused or overly-anxious yet performed poorly and thus Drive Theory is widely regarded as outdated.
Current theories of anxiety suggest that individuals can have individual zones of optimal functioning (Hanin, 1986), and that anxiety itself fluctuates across time (temporal patterning), for example McAuleys (1985) study on competitive golf found that cognitive anxiety was higher at the half-way stage than at the onset of the round, but somatic anxiety was significantly lower. Furthermore Martens et al (1990) predicted that cognitive and somatic anxiety will remain stable unless the athletes expectations of success change. This was clearly evident in McIlroys performance, as his poor performance towards the end occurred concurrently with the other golfers behind him on the leader-board closing his and thus McIlroy would have realised his chances of winning were diminishing. Another issue is the degree to which the athlete themselves see their anxiety as facilitative or debilitative towards performance (Mellalieu et al., 2006) and thus altering the athletes perceptions of their anxiety should enable them to perform better.
As aformentioned anxiety can take both state and trait forms. But anxiety can also be divided into somatic (physical) and cognitive (mental) forms. For example golf isn't a particularly physically demanding but it is still probable that it increases heart rate as it is played. However if an increased heart and respiratory rates occur pre-competition or before a shot, these symptoms are characteristic of somatic anxiety (Weinberg & Gould, 2007).
Interventions to combat anxiety
Anxiety is multidimensional in that it is cognitive and somatic and so interventions must acknowledge this. Sufferers of somatic anxiety might notice a dry throat or 'tight' muscles. It is imprtant that athletes dont percieve this as a negative affect as it is probably due to the effects of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reducing saliva production, a common indication of the SNS's role in the 'flight of fight' response (Keable, 1997). And, in combating the tight muscles, progressive muscular relaxation (PMR) could be one technique as it allows an athlete to focus on contracting and then relaxing their muscles, and at the same time gaining control and awareness of their own body.
Positive self-talk would be one intervention aimed at combating cognitive anxiety and negative thoughts. Changing negative self-talk to positive self-talk is important as it redirects attentional focus to provide encouragement and motivation (Weinberg & Gould, 2007) and it is imprtant that the athlete (McIlroy) should focus upon what he can do to win, rather than how well the other golfers around him are doing.
Imagery is also a key technique employed. Imagery, and its ability to lower anxiety, are founded upon psychoneuromuscular theory, which suggests that imagining a motor performance (e.g. a golf swing) results in activity in the motor cortex and peripheral physiological changes such as EMG activity. Although this link seems tenuous, with little scientific evidence, imagery is still widely used and regarded as a vital tool to athletes.
Conclusions
I hope the above hub helps you to not only expand your understanding of anxiety, but how it influences athletes and how it can be controlled. I am not a golfer, and thus the hub is written with a scientific approach, and only takes into account that anxiety could affect performance, and doesn't take into account improvements that could be made regarding McIlroy's shot choice or technique. For an excellent hub on this, see http://hubpages.com/hub/Rory-McIlroy-and-his-bad-moment.
References
Hanin, Y. L. (1986). State-trait anxiety research on sports in the USSR. In C. D. Spielberger & R. DiazGuerrero (Eds.), Cross-cultural anxiety (Vol. 3, pp. 45–64). New York: Hemisphere
Keable, D. (1997). The management of anxiety: A guide for therapists. Churchill Livingstone.
McAuley, E. (1985). Modeling and self-efficacy: A test of Bandura’smodel. Journal of Sport Psychology, 7, 283-295.
Mellalieu, S.D., Hanton, S. and Fletcher, D. (2006). A competitive anxiety review: Recent directions in sport psychology research. In S. Hanton and S.D. Mellalieu (Eds.), Literature Reviews in Sport Psychology (pp. 1-45). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science
Singh, S. (2008). Psychology of Sports Performance: Applications, Interventions and Methods. Global Vision.
Spence, J.T., & Spence, K.W. (1966). The motivational components of manifest anxiety: Drive and drive stimuli. In C.D. Spielberger (Ed.), Anxiety and behavior. New York: Academic Press.
Weinberg, R. S. & Gould, D. (2007). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology. 4th Edition. Human Kinetics.
