From Ben Stokes to Jordan Spieth, best laid plans can be the cause of collapse

Osman Samiuddin examines the conundrum of collapse, in which what always worked no longer does and it becomes impossible to see from inside the eye of the hurricane.

Ben Stokes, left, and Jordan Spieth both recently suffered high-profile collapses at major moments. (Saurabh Das and Chris Carlson / AP)

“Buddy, it seems like we’re collapsing”. Out came these words, floating as innocent and free as a stray plastic bag escaping from the eye of a storm, a snapshot from inside an implosion.

Even now, so soon, we know these are immortal words, as potent and haunting as if somebody had tweeted from the deck of the Titanic. They have their own power, not in need of any image to express their depth.

Hemingway may have stolen – or not even ever written – what is said to the greatest six-word novel ever (“For sale, baby shoes, never worn”), but we know the provenance of these six words. One day they too may make for a damn good book.

They came from the mouth of Jordan Spieth, directed to his caddie Michael Greller. Spieth did not specify but they probably came as he walked from the 12th green to the 13th tee, having just quadruple-bogeyed the 12th.

As it was the final round, Sunday at The Masters, and he was leading and in sight of becoming only the fourth to win consecutive Masters, what was just a bad hole turned into a collapse.

Spieth talks a lot to his caddie, chattering constantly and is hyper-articulate in his dealings with the press. But these words, so self-aware, are something else; in them is both recognition and acceptance of his situation, helplessness and a plea for help: he explained later he wanted a response from Greller that would help him rebound.

More from The Masters:

Review: The Masters 2016 proved Big Three of Spieth, McIlroy and Day can be challenged

Gallery: Jordan Spieth hands off green jacket to Danny Willett after wild final round – in pictures

Athletes train all their lives to get to a state where they do not know they have been defeated until they actually have been defeated. They may sense it inside, because for most, this is a state they acquire not one they are born with.

Just a week before Spieth, but a world away, Ben Stokes saw a similar defeat. By his own admission, he did not understand that he was collapsing until he bowled the penultimate ball of the World Twenty20. Only after Carlos Braithwaite hit that third ball for six, a mis-hit, did Stokes realise he had collapsed. Until then, even after conceding two sixes, he had thought he could still win.

Here, like Spieth, he may have understood that the forces that pull you to defeat and the forces that push you to victory are, if not the same, then often and easily mistaken. Sportsmen often operate unthinkingly – not exactly that they do not think but that, after years and years of practice, they can do something expertly – to a level very few humans can – without having to think too much about it.

At peak moments, they do what they do so unthinkingly they enter a zone.

But sometimes that same unthinking works against them. For instance, Spieth’s tee shot on the 12th, which he said later he swung too quickly. He should have, he said, taken a bit more time, a deep breath’s worth, before swinging.

That makes sense, as long as you allow that as many, if not more, times, he has probably walked in just the same and swung just as quickly into a tee shot and hit it just right. That is what he has trained himself to do.

World T20 final: Eoin Morgan refuses to blame Ben Stokes for England's late collapse

Stokes felt that he had bowled the yorkers right, and with yorkers, it is important to feel them coming out right, that the release point is just right. You practice it for hours and hours and recognise the right feeling and in a match situation, you hope to recognise it again.

Stokes thought he had, except they did not come right. They fell probably just a little shorter but because he was feeling it and yorkers were the plan, he went with this force. He had done it in the last match and a few before, and this force had taken him to triumph. He did not realise that he was getting the wrong lengths, or that this might not be the best plan until it was too late.

There is another truth from these moments. All sport, even a team sport like cricket, is ultimately, individual, especially in its consequence on the athlete. Only he can know the true elation of a triumph and so too only he knows the despair of defeat, because only he understands how much he put into it.

They try and parcel up defeat among teammates but that is out of duty to the manufactured ideal of humanity, that we are in it together. We are, but we deal with it individually. Nobody will be able to deal with what Stokes went through but Stokes himself.

This should, you think, be more obvious to Spieth, golf being such a lonely game. But some see in his constant use of “we” when talking about his game an effort to suppress that loneliness.

Maybe the futility of those efforts will become clearer to him. It is a cruel, exacting business, sport.

Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE

Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport