Now, let's turn our attention to a bit of sports news, primarily tennis, because Britain's Jack Draper has lost, and it was in dramatic fashion in his US Open semifinal. The 22-year-old was sick. He was ill on court several times in his defeat to the world number one Yannick Sinner. In the biggest match of his career, Draper went down in straight set, 7,5,7,6,6,2 in New York. During the second set, the 25th seed vomited three times. After the match, he said that, I'm quite an anxious human being, and I do feel a little bit sick when it gets tough. Well, Sinner will go on to play the American Taylor Fritz in Sunday's tomorrow's final Let's discuss the psychology of what is taking place on that tennis court. The sports psychologist and senior lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, Paul McCarthy, joins me now. He's also helped a number of professional athletes manage performance anxiety. Hello, welcome to the program. First off, when you saw, I don't know if you saw it live or you saw it, consequently, in reports, when you saw him vomiting, what came to mind straight away?

Yeah, well, I guess the experience of exercise, well, what's called exercise-associated gastrointestinal distress is something that we do see from time to time, but usually with extreme physical exhaustion. See it on the tennis court is perhaps a little unusual, but understandable under the circumstances in the heat, the duration of the game, and the consequences for Jack himself.

The degree of anxiety that someone would have to reach for that physical reaction. Just talk us through what's going on in the body.

From a cognitive perspective, what we are thinking about, there's a lot of uncertainty There is uncertainty. People are making anticipation about what will happen. There is uncertainty about the duration of the event and its outcome. So that stir of thoughts and feelings is creating a lot of, perhaps, undue stress at that time. But within the body as well, there will be muscular tension. There'll be physical exhaustion from the time and the heat as well. And a combination of factors will contribute to those outcomes as we have seen. And perhaps where psychologists do most of their work is trying to understand the things that happened beforehand, the antecedents and the consequences. And excessive worry is typical because when events are important to us and the events are at the same time uncertain, we will consider what the possibilities might be. We will be worried, but trying our best to achieve the outcomes we're looking for.

Sports, elite sports people have so many obstacles, tennis players. I mean, you're playing on your own. This is not a team sport. That is an obstacle in itself. Would you see this level of anxiety manifesting within different sports disciplines?

Yes, and really does depend on the demands. Normally, we would explain it in terms of the demands that are placed upon an athlete and the resources they have to cope with those demands. The demand's changed depending the different sports. It might be in terms of duration for a triathlon, or it might be in terms of duration in a tennis game with the heat, the importance of the game, semifinals, finals, etc. So the context in terms of the environment is always a contributing factor. And I guess from an individual standpoint, we're trying to understand what interpretations and appraisals the athletes are making about the situations in which they find themselves and the degree to which they see those events as a challenge, something within their control, something they have resources to deal with compared with a threat where they feel they perhaps do not have the same resources to cope with the demands. This is what we try to make our understanding with athletes about.

When you talk about understanding within this discipline, within your field, the key to this is how do athletes cope? Because it literally is mind over matter. The athlete may be perfectly capable, but once those negative thoughts, that spiral begins, how should they stop and just bring it under control and calm things down? What are you learning?

Yeah, and a lot of the work we will do will be working on regulation. So it will be addressing the thoughts that they have, how functional or dysfunctional those thoughts might be. We are trying to, of course, be more thoughtful or more helpful thoughts to mind. At the same time, we're also trying to regulate our body so that we can deal with muscular tension or deal with exhaustion and address decision making along the way. And those are skills that are learnable, teachable, and athletes can learn them as they're progressing through their career. So regardless of age and stage, they can make the most of their circumstances by investing a little bit more in the psychological demands of their sport so that they have the resources to cope with them. And what we see typically is that athletes who learn these skills, exercise those skills, put them into their practice, and then into competition are the ones who are most successful in the end.

Talking about who actually makes it, I read a report, and I think it was in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. Basically, they made the point that the developmental period for tennis players, in particular, and athletes at that elite level coincides with the age. It overlaps with a peak onset of mental health disorders. So is the race really on to try and control this level of anxiety and get those players over that so they know how to cope with it? Because I think it's accepted within psychology that mental health disorders normally tend to show by the age of 24.

Yeah. So we do see those examples of what is noticed, acknowledged, or may be assessed by age 14 and the detrimental effects even four years on. And in sport, particularly in high-level sports, children and young athletes are exposed to demands maybe far beyond what the typical child or teenager is exposed to. And under those circumstances, it seems reasonable that if they wish to participate, that they're given the resources to do so. And those resources means not just that it's psychological support, it may be social support as well, but it allows them to make sense of themselves, their environment, and the context in which they find themselves. And that's the typical work of a sports psychologist is to deliver that educational input at the beginning, and also therapeutic support as they're progressing through their teenage years into young adulthood in professional sport.

Okay, it's been fascinating. Paul McCarthy, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

Thank you.