Arousal is defined using a continuum that varies from deep sleep to intense excitement. Over-arousal can lead to anxiety, a negative emotional state that causes worry and nervousness. Cognitive anxiety relates to the psychological state of the performer which can manifest itself as worry about potential failure whereas somatic anxiety describes the physiological effects that anxiety has on the body (Burton, Martens & Vealey, 1990). A performer can also be said to suffer from anxiety at a given moment in time (state anxiety) or to be predisposed to experience anxiety in a range of situations (trait anxiety).
Trait anxiety may have been a cause of McIlroy’s loss of his lead in the Masters. Hassmen, Koilvula and Hansson (1998) studied 8 elite golfers and found that performers with higher trait anxiety had significantly different mood scores on the Profile of Mood States test prior competition compared to preseason, alluding to the disposition of athletes with high trait anxiety to feel negative emotions prior to competition.
Event importance could have impacted McIlroy’s performance. The Masters is an elite event in golf which could have increased the pressure McIlroy felt from the media or coaches. However, Clark (2007) studied 35 professional golfers in high-pressure environments and found that there was no relationship between whether a player was in a winning position with how likely the player was to win, and also with their final round scores. However, Williams, Frank & Lester (2000) found that it was only somatic, not cognitive anxiety, that could be predicted by perceived importance of the competition.
Social evaluation from the crowd could’ve generated anxiety. Kingsbury, Gaudreau, Hill and Coplan (2014) found that golfers’ putts were accurate more frequently in non-evaluative situations when their somatic anxiety was low. However, they also found that no difference in the accuracy of putting between golfers with high or low somatic anxiety in the social-evaluation condition, suggesting there are factors other than somatic anxiety that contribute to decreased performance.
Uncertainty surrounding the event may also have caused anxiety. He may not have been expecting to be 4 shots in hand and so may not have mentally prepared for the potential consequences of this position. Robinson and Freeston (2015) studied 160 university students and found that intolerance to uncertainty was positively correlated with performance anxiety, however, the effect of the anxiety on actual performance outcomes was not measured.
A theory that aims to explain the relationship between anxiety, arousal and performance is the Inverted U Theory. This theory explains arousal as having an optimal point, with performance increasing up to the optimum and then decreasing after the optimum. It is a development of the earlier theory Drive theory by Spence and Spence which described a linear relationship between arousal and performance. However, the drive theory did not account for the fact that elite performers, such as Mcllory, choke under pressure at major championships. The inverted U theory, therefore, is a better explanation as it describes how the performance of elite performers can be negatively affected by higher levels of arousal. It can also explain how different sports and performers may have different levels of optimum arousal due to varying motor tasks as suggested by Cratty (1968) (as cited in Oxendine (1970)). As a golfer, Mcllory may have a lower level of optimal arousal due to the fine motor skills involved, and the accuracy required in the shots.
The multidimensional anxiety theory aims to differentiate between somatic and cognitive anxiety. Somatic anxiety affects performance as described in the inverted U theory. However, cognitive anxiety has a negative linear relationship with performance as stated by Martens (2002) (as cited by McNally, 2002.) This would suggest that a performer would be able to play at their peak with low levels of cognitive anxiety and optimal levels of somatic anxiety. (Foundations of sport and exercise psychology, Weinberg & Gould, 6th ed) McIlroy may have been experiencing high levels of cognitive anxiety at the 10th hole in the Masters which may have involved thoughts of worry and nervousness due to the unexpected situation, causing negative self-talk to distract him from the task. Moreover, he could have been experiencing higher than optimal levels of somatic anxiety, causing an increase in heart rate and muscle tension, leading to reduced accuracy in the fine motor skills required in golf. However, an issue with this approach is the fact that it is overly simplistic in its explanation of the effect of cognitive anxiety by neglecting fact that some cognitive anxiety may be beneficial to some performers.
Jones’ (1995) control model of anxiety suggests that it is not merely the presence of cognitive anxiety that affects performance, but the way in which the anxiety is perceived. If anxiety is perceived as facilitative, then performance levels increase. According to Jones’ model, situational variables impact the way in which anxiety is perceived. The first of those variables is self-confidence. If an athlete has low self-confidence they are more likely to perceive feelings of anxiety as debilitative and so it will cause a decline in performance. Similarly, if an athlete has not mastered coping strategies to control their anxiety they may view it as something that is uncontrollable leading to detrimental effects on performance. McIlroy may not have mastered coping strategies to deal with his anxiety and so may have felt out of control, causing him to view it as debilitative, leading to it having a negative impact on performance. Or, due to a low self-confidence, he perceived his anxiety negatively and so it caused a decline in his performance.
There is a range of anxiety interventions that McIlroy could’ve undertaken to prevent this from occurring. Firstly, progressive muscle relaxation is used to control somatic anxiety. Rory would use this to learn to recognise muscle tension and then be able to reduce this tension to achieve maximum control when completing his golf swing. He would need to focus on the tension in his arm muscles the most and so could begin this technique by tensing his arms as much as possible. By doing this, he would begin to recognise the feeling of extreme muscular tension. By slowly releasing this tension, he would feel the difference between tense and relaxed muscles and learn not only to be able to detect tension in muscles but to associate the feeling of relaxed muscles with optimum performance. This would also help him to have more control over the fine, accurate movements required to achieve optimal angle and strength behind the swing.
Another intervention Rory could use is a range of breathing techniques. This is also designed to reduce the effects somatic anxiety and would be useful to Rory to reduce the effect of the central nervous system as slow, deep breathing has been found to increase the prevalence of the parasympathetic nervous system (Jerath, Crawford, Barnes & Harden, 2015) reducing the sympathetic nervous system response, slowing his heart rate, enabling him to focus more on his shot. The 1:2 ratio technique is carried out by the athlete inhaling for a set number of counts (4 seconds) and then exhaling for double the amount of inhalation time (8 seconds). This would be useful for McIlroy to carry out just before he hits his shot, to relax his shoulder and arm muscles and to enable a reduction in heart rate. McIlroy would have to practice this to assess what breathing technique works best for him. He would spend time before each training session practicing for it to become an automatic procedure at competition.
A cognitive intervention McIlroy could implement into his competition preparation routine is the relaxation response. This technique uses the basic elements of meditation to calm the mind and refocus attention on the important events or cues in their current situation. To perform this successfully, McIlroy would have to practice for at least 20 minutes a day to learn how to focus his mind in times of anxiety. The relaxation response requires a quiet environment and so McIlroy would have to find an isolated space prior to competition to carry this out. It also requires the individual to be in a comfortable position, for example sitting or lying down, and a mental devise which may be a single word that is repeated to focus the mind. Solberg, Bergland, Engen, Ekeberg & Loeb found that meditation was related with lower levels of reported tension in elite shooters (another fine-skilled sport that relies on accuracy), and subsequently a positive correlation between low reported tension and high performance levels. However, a risk of this technique being used just prior to performance is the possibility of McIlroy’s arousal level falling below optimum, which could also disrupt performance levels. Therefore, it is important for McIlroy to experiment with the different anxiety interventions prior to competition to establish what its effective for him since, as already discussed, each person experiences anxiety differently, manifesting in different optimum levels of arousal and therefore each athlete will differ in how best to manage their arousal and anxiety levels.