I unfortunately witnessed a very disheartening situation at one of the Omega tournaments this past summer. As the Tournament Director of the tour, I am ashamed honestly to talk about this, but as you all know, I'm very open in my blogs and I feel that it's important to talk about all aspects of things. Even uncomfortable ones.
Plus, as a player myself I know these situations happen on other tours and at weekly tournaments, so this is not an isolated event.
Long story short, a player who has played on the Omega Tour for the last couple of 2 years has maybe lasted until Sunday in one event. That shows his dedication and the love of the game and that he isn't playing on the tour to try to make a living; he just adores the sport that much and keeps competing.
However, on this particular night, he found out that that love can be disrupted.
His opponent on this late Saturday night match had gotten upset at him and instead of keeping his anger internal, his opponent was pretty much throwing a temper tantrum, being vocal, upset and disruptive to him. And as loud as he was, he of course was disruptive to players around him as well.
As the Tournament Director, I was summoned over to handle the situation. I basically told the two players to stop yelling and talking to each other and that they were not allowed to speak to each other again during their match. I stood there and refed the rest of the match. Honestly, I didn't really ref any shot - I stood there looming over their table to ensure that they both stopped being verbally abusive to each other (they both had started to raise their voices at each other, each one defending themselves).
So what part of the situation disheartened me? It was when the player who plays every tournament for the fun of the game because he loves the game, told me he's no longer having fun.
It was like a punch to my stomach.
Although he was upset when he told me this, it is actually very unfortunate and very true that when you run across players who are verbally abusive or throwing temper tantrums or can’t handle their emotions, it makes it difficult to love playing the game; to even want to play anymore.
His exact words to me were, “I don't need these frustrations to play the game I love. If he wants the money that bad, I'll just give him the match so I don't have to deal with his bullshit.”
I don’t blame him - we all want a great, calm atmosphere to compete. It’s already tough enough to handle our own emotions and thoughts, and then to throw in an outside force (rude player), makes it that much tougher to even want to play anymore.
However, we don’t live in shatterproof houses and we don’t live in daily life without discomfort. My wish is that people would learn to handle their emotions more professionally. They don’t realize how much of a positive impact it would be for everyone around them, including themselves.
Even though the opponent who got upset feels that he was “wronged,” he has absolutely that right to feel that way. The problem is, he hasn’t learned yet a better way to control his emotions than raising his voice and being vocal and rude.
It just really made me sad to know that because some people do not handle their emotions well yet, that it almost convinces players to not want to play anymore at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment