Mind Maps — Keys to the Inner Game, Documentaries, Pirates Choice

Mind Maps — Keys to the Inner Game, Documentaries, Pirates Choice

I must admit, I’m a bandwagon Tennis fan. 

Throughout the year, I might scan a headline or two about who has won the major tournaments, but otherwise, I don’t pay much attention. Yet, when the Australian Open rolls around in my hometown of Melbourne each year, I can’t help but tune in.

There’s something reassuringly familiar about watching the broadcast from Melbourne Park–seeing these gladiators in the blistering Australian heat. Sneakers squeaking on the hardcourt. The rhythm of a rally, suspended in the oddly polite silence of the crowd, punctuated by the hollow, percussive thwok of each groundstroke. Even an insightful comment from Jim Courier, interlaced with his North American douchebaggery, is somehow comforting. 

Individually, none of these elements are remarkable. But what makes them special is the weight of memory they carry. The end of long childhood summers, too hot to go outside. The heartbreak of watching Pat Rafter defeated on the high-visibility green courts. The outrage when Alicia Molik’s ace was called a fault. Back then, we relied on human judgement to determine if a ball was in or out, those now-obsolete linespeople, crouching, expressionless, bearers only of bad news, occasionally copping a stray green missile or a verbal barrage from a player. Before we ceded authority of the courts to the infallibility of machines, it made sense to scream at the TV, enraged at the all-too-human injustice of a missed call. 

We live in a world where, theoretically, everything can be watched on-demand– at this moment, I could be watching Brazilian Jui Jitsu or Bulgarian steeplechase.  In an era of infinite choice, it is the older, more familiar bonds– a sense of place, collective memory and personal history– that makes us feel more connected.

So, maybe it was out of habit. Maybe, after five months abroad, it was longing for that familiarity of home that drew Grace and I to watch the Australian Open, steaming it from our laptop as we sipped our morning coffees in Greece. We only really took notice of the last few matches of the tournament— we are bandwagon fans, after all. Janik Sinner’s steely dismantling of the men’s draw was impressive, but it was the women’s final that stayed with us.

Like much of the crowd, we found ourselves cheering for the American, Maddison Keys as she faced off against the reigning champion, Anna Sabalenka. It was the underdog factor. Despite a hugely successful career, Keys had never won a Grand Slam. She suffered heartbreaking losses, including a US Open final where, in the most critical moments she shied away from her signature power and was roundly defeated. That loss, followed by injury, forced her into a period of soul-searching, faced alongside her husband-coach, Bjorn Fatangelo. Writing for The Athletic, Matthew Futterman described the mental and strategic shift they made before the final:

Together they came upon the mindset that there was something that mattered more than [winning]. Leaving the court with no regrets after every match, the reward for playing with the kind of courage and conviction that allows someone to sleep at night no matter what the scoreboard shows.
Earlier in the week, Fratangelo explained how they had landed on her approach to the game. For years, she and other coaches had been trying to harness her power, reining it in with some control. That worked a decade or so ago, but now almost everyone has big power. Maybe the best path to the waterfall was to make hers even bigger, and if that meant living with some errors and some losses, so be it.

Now at 30 years old, perhaps approaching the twilight of her career, she had another shot at glory.

The final was a turbulent arm-wrestle. Keys blazed away with the first set and then Sabalenka wrested control of the second. The third and deciding set was poised on a knife’s edge. In a flurry of powerful shots, unencumbered by the weight of past failures, Keys took control and broke serve to win the match. Cue the tears and tennis glory. 

If I’m a bad tennis fan, I was an even worse tennis player. I played junior tennis for a decade and was terrible the entire time. No false humility here, I was genuinely bad. I loved playing doubles alongside my oldest friend, Justin, but my singles matches usually didn’t go well. For most of my childhood, my Sunday mornings were characterised by having an emotional meltdown in a different suburban primary school tennis court. 

While I’ve long since put the racquet down, there’s plenty of moments in adult life that have tested the emotions, asking questions that land more deeply than a well struck forehand.

Lately, I’ve been grappling with what to do next in my career. I’m lucky to have options, but feeling unfocused and lacking direction remains a frustrating place to be. 

In confronting my minor career crisis, I recently read the book, Good Work: Reclaiming your Inner Ambition by Paul Millard. As a corporate consultant turned writer, his story of breaking away from a conventional career resonated with me. In the book, he questions the default assumptions of chasing career progress, better pay and more work for its own sake. Instead, he advocates for the courage to slow down and experiment in order to find a more well-suited path. 

One idea in the book that stuck with me, bringing us back to the world of tennis:

The concept of the inner game was popularized in the Inner Game of Tennis, by author and tennis performance coach W. Timothy Gallwey. In the book, he shares his experience coaching top tennis players. His approach to helping them improve rests on the assumption that everyone has two selves: Self 1, the “Teller,” and Self 2, the “Doer." The relationship between the Teller and Doer determines a player's level of improvement.⁠ The Teller is the inner voice that says, “You can’t do that,” or “That was not good enough,” or "You should be doing this instead.” This voice compares us to others and holds us up to ever higher standards. The Doer, on the other hand, is our natural intuitive self. But it can only take the lead when we quiet the Teller.

While clearly a simplification of psychology, this model struck at a core truth about how our internal narrative interacts with our felt experience. 

What made Maddison Keys’ victory so compelling wasn’t just her skill or strategy – it was the triumph of her intuitive expression over the narratives of disappointment and regret that could have weighed her down. 

It was only by accepting that she may never have won a slam that she was able to reclaim her natural style and play her best. 

Sport can be mindless entertainment, but at its best, it reflects the challenges we face in life.

Whether it’s an overwhelmed child gripping a racket too tightly or an adult at a career crossroads, the battle is the same. 

By getting out of our own way, we might learn to play freely. 


Recommendations

📺 Netflix documentaries to cry to - I've recently watched two documentaries that also led to small amounts of salty discharge from my eyeballs. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (2024), is a documentary about a young man who builds a meaningful life in the role-playing-game World of Warcraft while living with disability in the real world. Even if you haven't spent countless hours playing video games–as I did as a kid when I wasn't losing tennis matches–you will find this powerful.

Very different but equally moving is Daughters (2024), a documentary that follows several young girls who are able to reunite with their incarcerated fathers for a special dance in prison. It includes beautifully told stories about about healing through vulnerability. Watching it while working with an NGO in Greece also made me reflect on how well-designed interventions—like education or community programs—not only provide material support or information but also offer a different commodity vital for survival: hope.

💿 Afro-Cuban / Senegalese Classic Album - One of my New Year's resolutions was to listen to more albums and one of my favourites so far has been the Orchestra Boab's album Pirate's Choice (1982). The story of Afro-Cuban music in Senegal is a fascinating reflection of history and homecoming. The transatlantic slave trade included Africans being forcibly taken to the Caribbean, bringing their drumming traditions and call-and-response singing with them. Over generations, these elements merged with European instrumentation, giving rise to Cuban son, rumba, and charanga. By the early 20th century, these Cuban styles, deeply African at their core, began making their way back across the Atlantic. Senegalese traders and sailors carried vinyl records home from Havana, while radio stations in Dakar broadcasted the latest hits from Cuban orchestras. The music resonated because it wasn’t foreign but felt familiar. By the 1950s and 60s, Senegalese musicians were not just imitating these sounds but transforming them, blending Cuban brass and guitar rhythms with local storytelling and percussion. This album is the sound of that full-circle journey, the return of a rhythm that had crossed oceans, evolved, and come home in a new form.