AN INTERESTING AND slightly incongruous shout out during Tom Brady’s retirement video was to his competitors, who he thanked with emphasis. 

Competitors don’t typically get a look in beyond the usual “three cheers for Glen, I’m sure we’ll see ye again someday”. 

So when Brady mentioned them in the same sentence as his friends, family and teammates a question arose as to whether he was familiar with a certain book. And Google confirmed that yes, indeed, perhaps the most remarkable of all modern day athletes has read the Inner Game of Tennis, by W Timothy Gallwey. 

It explained his thanks for his opponents and hinted at other aspects of his mentality which might have been honed by this text. 

The Inner Game of Tennis was first published in 1972. The approach it promotes was considered radical at the time. And even a half a century later there are many aspects which run counter to how we routinely consider sport.

An overly-simplistic summary is that the book encourages learning through experience rather than prescriptive instruction.

Gallwey identifies a ‘Self 1′ – the analytical, and often ruthlessly critical, conscious self. Then there is ‘Self 2′, the more innate part of you which can figure out complex calculations in an instant and help you hit that cross-court winner with top-spin while on the run.   

So he advises players to get out of their own way; to trust the body and part of the mind which unconsciously instructs it in deft, complex physical acts. 

When you make a mistake, do not admonish yourself. Instead observe, remain cool, and the mind and body will be better equipped to perform the skill next time. 

In a way Gallwey’s approach mirrors that of ancient philosophies such as Taoism in its principle of effortless action, or not forcing things. Effortless action does not mean you’re in a stupor where you don’t bother to care; more that you are simply doing the task, in a state of deep but relaxed concentration. Or flow. 

“Do or do not, there is no try,” as Yoda put it. George Lucas borrowed liberally from Taoism when creating the Jedi. 

I’ve no depth of knowledge to speak of when it comes to American Football, but I do know what an athlete in their flow looks like. We all do, really. Brady on a fourth-quarter pursuit of an improbable cause has been one of the most electrifying sights in sport. 

What nearly everybody on the planet would regard as unbearable pressure was to him a comfortable state. You got the sense he felt at his most alive in these moments, not because of any extraordinary spike in adrenaline, but because he was entirely serene in his concentration and singular focus on the task. 

Most of us can only imagine what it’s like to attain that level of mastery and raison d’etre. It must be tough to give up. 

We well know by now the line about athletes dying twice, once in retirement and once in actual death. The athletic death has to be especially hard when you’ve reached such heights. Of course Brady is on course for three demises having already retired a year ago. 

Cristiano Ronaldo was, it turned out, falsely credited with talking Brady out of retirement. But Brady did cut something of a sorrowful figure when watching Ronaldo have his last great game, scoring a hat-trick against Tottenham last March. 

Afterwards, the contrast of the soccer player in his club tracksuit, still aglow with the exertions and triumph of the day, and this suited tourist over from the sunshine state was, frankly, tragic. It came as no great surprise that Brady decided to postpone the dying of the light.  

He departs now possibly in a less equivocal frame of mind. The less than stellar year he’s had – by his own standard – probably diminishes second thoughts. 

The brief farewell video too was more authentic and final than the “super emotional retirement essay” he acknowledges you can only do once. 

The catch in his voice underscores the difficulty he will face walking away from such a life.

Unspendable amounts of money and a dizzying array of new career options cannot replace the sense of mission he will have had every day he went to work with his teammates, and every time he stepped onto the field against rivals whose motivation was the equal of his. 

In the Inner Game of Tennis, Gallwey talks about an aversion he had for competition. Why should it be so important? Was it not based on insecurity? For me to feel good, why should I have to win and prove myself in some way better than you? 

He came to terms with what felt like an unsatisfactory zero sum game by considering a surfer waiting for a big wave. Why wait, when he could achieve a state of flow on a medium sized wave? Because the surfer values the challenge the wave presents.  

“It is those very obstacles, the size and churning power of the wave, which draw from the surfer his greatest effort. It is only against the big waves that he is required to use all his skill, all his courage and concentration to overcome; only then can he realise the true limits of his capacities,” Gallwey wrote. 

So he took this approach into his sport and arrived at the “startling conclusion that true competition is identical with true cooperation”. 

And so all of these decades later Brady thanked those on the other side of the scrimmage, who helped him to do what he did over a career extraordinary in both time span and the consistent performance of stunning feats.  

‘The meaning of competition’ is the penultimate chapter of the Inner Game of Tennis. The last is ‘The inner game off the court’. 

We hope it goes well for Brady; that he finds something which gives him as much purpose and peace.