Mentality of Next Match After Losing

During the International 9 Ball Open back in October, I was reading some comments on Facebook about the tournament and players.

A big name player had just lost, but was still deep in the tournament.

Someone commented:  "Gonna be tough to bounce back right away after that tough loss.  We'll see."

A pro replied, "Easy to bounce back when you don't get to shoot....harder to come back if you dogged it. "

It was such an important exchange, I wanted to take a minute to talk about it.

You see, the pro was spot on.

In one sense, we can all agree that it can be difficult to bounce back right away after a tough loss.  But in all honesty, we do bounce back "easier" if our opponent simply outshot us, right?

It's when "we" are the cause of the loss that makes the next match tougher.

Because why?

Yep, because it's tough to stay in the present moment.

Plenty of players have won matches after a close, tough match.  But if a player missed balls, missed opportunities, or played bad, it's difficult to shake those ill feelings as you go right into your next match.  There sometimes isn't enough time to get over the embarrassment or sick feelings we have for dogging it in front of a crowd, or the feelings we have about ourselves for dogging it.  And therefore, it's tough to get ourselves into the "present" moment frame of mind in the next match because our body and mind are still reeling from the repercussions of the last match where we shot ourselves in our big stupid foot.

Just as I wrote about the other day - having a quarterback mentality of forgetting what just happened can go a long way to help you prevail in your matches.

Here's a really cool ending, though.  The person they were talking about was Chang Jung-Lin.  And guess what?  Yep, he ended up winning his very next match.  He was so determined because he didn't get many chances in his previous match, he actually went up 8-0 in his match before finally winning and moving on to the finals.

And then he defeated his opponent in the finals and won tournament!  $40K, baby.  Not bad, Chang!

That's some strong mental toughness that dude has!