TITLE: From a Champion's Mind
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 23, 2008  6:47 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I'm a big tennis fan.  I like to play and would love to
play more, though I've never played well.  But I also
like to watch tennis -- it is a game of athleticism
and strategy.  The players are often colorful, yet many
of the greatest have been quiet, classy, and respectful
of the game.  I confess a penchant for the colorful
players; Jimmy Connors is my favorite player of all
time, and in the 1990s my favorite was Andre Agassi.

Agassi's chief rival throughout his career was one of
the game's all-time greats, Pete Sampras.  Sampras won
a record fourteen Grand Slam titles (a record under
assault by the remarkable Roger Federer) and finished
six consecutive years as the top-ranked player in the
world (a record that no one is likely to break any time
soon).  He was also one of the quiet, respectful players,
much more like me than the loud Agassi, who early in his
career seemed to thrive on challenging authority and
crossing boundaries just for the attention.

Sampras recently published a tennis memoir, <EM>A
Champion's Mind</EM>, which I gladly read -- a rare
treat these days, reading a book purely for pleasure.
But even while reading for pleasure I could not help
noticing parallels to my professional interest in
software development and teaching.  I saw in Sampras's
experience some lessons that that we in CS have also
learned.  Here are a few.

<EM>Teaching and Humility</EM>

After Sampras had made his mark as a great player,
one of his first coaches liked to be known as one of
the coaches who helped make Sampras the player he was.
Sampras gave that coach his due, and gave the two men
who coached him for most of his pro career a huge
amount of credit for honing specific elements of his
game and strategy.  But without sounding arrogant, he
also was clear that no coach "made" him.  He had a
certain amount of native talent, and he was also born
with the kind of personality that drove him to excel.
Sampras would likely have been one of the all-time
greats even if he had had different coaches in his
youth, and even as a pro.

Great performers have what it takes to succeed.  It is
rare for a teacher to help create greatness in a student.
What made Sampras's pro coaches so great themselves is
not that they built Sampras but that they were able to
identify the one or two things that he needed at that
point in his career and helped him work on those parts
of his game -- or his mind.  Otherwise, they let the
drive within him push him forward.

As a teacher, I try figure out what students need and
help them find that.  It's tough to do when teaching a
class of twenty-five students, because so much of the
teaching is done with the group and so cannot be
tailored to the individual as much as I might like and
as much as each might need.  But when mentoring students,
whether grad students or undergrads, a dose of humility
is in order.  As I think back to the very best of my
past students, I realize that I was most successful
when I helped them get past roadblocks or to remove
some source of friction in their thinking or their
doing.  Their energy often energized me, and I fed off
of the relationship as much as they did.

<EM>Agile Moments</EM>

The secret of greatness is working hard day in and day
out.  Sampras grew as a player because he had to in
order to achieve his goal of finishing six straight
years as #1.  And the only way to do that was to add
value to his game every day.  This seems consistent
with agile developers' emphasis on adding value to
their programs every day, through small steps and
daily builds.  Being out there every day also makes
it possible to get feedback more frequently and so
make the next day's work potentially more valuable.
For some reason, Sampras's comments on a commitment
to being in the arena day in and day out reminded me
of one of Kent Beck's early bits of writing on XP,
in which he proclaimed that, and the end of the day,
if you hadn't produced some code, you probably had
not given your customer any value.  I think Sampras
felt similarly.

Finally, this paragraph from a man who never changed
the model of racket he used throughout his career,
even as technology made it possible for lesser players
to serve bigger and hit more powerful ground strokes.
Here he speaks of the court on which his legend grew
beyond ordinary proportion, Centre Court at the All
England Club:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
I enjoyed the relative "softness" of the court; it
was terrific to feel the sod give gently beneath my
feet with every step.  I felt catlike out there,
like I was on a soft play mat where I could do as I
pleased without worry, fear, or excessive wear and
tear.  Centre Court always made me feel connected
to my craft, and the sophisticated British crowd
enhanced that feeling.  It was a pleasure to play
before them, and they inspired me to play my best.
Wimbledon is a shrine, and it was always a joy to
perform there.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whatever else the agile crowd is about, feeling
connected to the craft of making software is at
its heart.  I like to use tools that give gently
beneath my feet, that let me make progress without
worry and fear.  Even ordinary craftsmen such as
I appreciate these feelings.
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