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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Sean Ingle

Let it out or bottle it up? Does venting emotion harm performance in elite sport?

Clockwise: John McEnroe, Harriet Dart, Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose all had wildly different reactions in the heat of battle.
Clockwise: John McEnroe, Harriet Dart, Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose all had wildly different reactions in the heat of battle. Composite: Universal, Getty, AP

Two scenes from an extraordinary week. The first: Justin Rose, a gentleman in a bearpit as Augusta hollered loud and long for Rory McIlroy. The second: the British tennis player Harriet Dart, causing a stink by asking for her French opponent to apply deodorant as “she’s smelling really bad” before succumbing to a 6-0, 6-3 thrashing.

Pressure does strange things, of course. But the wildly different reactions of Rose, Dart and indeed McIlroy, whose final round became part white-knuckle ride, part pass‑the‑parcel, raises an intriguing question: when the heat is on, should sport stars let their emotions out or bottle them up to improve their performance?

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