damasandra

the reason i like iga so much is that i relate heavily to how emotionally sensitive she is. in my head (needless to say, i do not know her) she is the archetypal gifted kid: all the talent in the world paired with the twin curses that are perfectionism and anxiety. when things are going well, being a gifted kid is awesome, the best thing in the world: everything is easy, you are smashing all the goals yourself and others set for you, you can absorb setbacks because they feel temporary (i failed this test because i had a stomachache; i will ace the next one).

the problem with being a gifted kid is that there is nothing worse than no longer being one. perfectionism is okay when you are usually perfect. anxiety is manageable when your anxieties are small. eventually things will go wrong. for some kids this might be when they go to college. for some it might be ingesting a contaminated prescription medicine and facing the prospect of your whole life as you know it going up in flames. different strokes.

if i was in iga's situation, i think i would be struggling SO hard with the way my world has changed in the last couple years. i would hate the way that on paper i was doing the right things (get a new coach, learn new skills, improve on faster surfaces) only for it not to work, or, worse, not to work all the time - if wim's coaching had just not worked from the beginning, logic would suggest that he was the problem, but it DID work, in a huge way, and now it isn't working any more. i would hate that everything is set up for me to succeed and the only thing in my way was myself. my mentality. my inability to adapt. my mind.

ultimately we're all just throwing theories out there and nobody knows the reality, but i don't necessarily think we should rush to conclude that this is a sports psychology problem. i saw a couple different sports psychologists as a youth soccer player. they are not therapists (or they shouldn't be). i don't think any of us are in a position to comment on daria's role and whether it's a bad or good thing; i've read some interviews with her and essentially vibe with what she says but no one except iga and her team have any idea of how that maps onto the day to day. could iga do with some fresh ideas, probably; is daria abusing her, probably not. does iga need a therapist, YES, she is 24 and mindbendingly famous and under horrendous pressure at all times. (i would be staggered if someone so tuned into mental health doesn't have one.) my impression of iga's issues is that they are not going to be solved by sports psychology; they are going to be solved by continuing to unpack her sense of self and her trauma (i stand by that word) and the way her experiences have taught her to see the world, and by doing that, understanding who she is NOW and how this version of herself needs to live and be coached. and be happy.

tl;dr i don't think it makes a great deal of difference who iga's coach is right now. my impression is that wim was focusing very much on improving iga's own game, not on whoever was across the net, and i wonder if maybe her next coach could switch that round - not only for tactical reasons but because if i were iga i think it would help me to feel less pressure. but ultimately no coaching is going to help her get out of her head. to be clear i do NOT mean that the current situation is iga's fault in any pejorative kind of way; i DO mean that she has so much on her shoulders and (it seems to me) does not have the kind of brain which is naturally set up to cope well with that. and she's so young. i'm about 18 months older and feel like a helpless baby at all times.

a) creating parity in what is still practically a start-up league is hard