The Illusion of "Clutch"

I have always considered myself a “clutch” performer. I have never missed a penalty kick in soccer. In baseball, I celebrated my 8th birthday with a grand slam and was disappointed on my next birthday when I didn’t come through with the grand slam, but hit for the cycle instead.

In my Vassar tennis career, one shot stands out as clutch. Down 6-5 match point in the 3rd set tiebreaker against Coe College, I turned toward the back fence and crossed my arms with fists clenched to form an “X.” I stepped up to the ad side a few steps behind the baseline, twisting my racquet in my hand, ready to return. A booming first serve came and I ripped the biggest, cleanest forehand winner of my life, right down the line and yelled, “Allez!”

I went on to win the tiebreaker 10-8 but was disappointed by not winning sooner and having to use my X-Factor. My X-Factor refers to a sign I make by crossing my arms as a cue to concentrate in critical situations when I need to be clutch. I’ve been flaunting my X-Factor ever since the human joystick return specialist Dante Hall lit up the NFL and although I don’t think it always works, I only remember the times when it does.
My personal experience makes me question the idea of clutch. Can an athlete actually raise their level of play at critical moments or is clutch a construct or fabrication?

We remember all of Jordan’s buzzer beaters but we forget that he also missed 29 game-winning shots. Clutch implies that some internal state, aware of the situation’s gravity, makes Jordan more likely to hit a particular shot when it’s a buzzer beater as opposed to a routine 1st quarter FG.

John Elway’s famous 4th quarter comebacks make clutch seem like procrastination because he waited until the end of the game to play well as was the case with my aforementioned tennis match.

My tennis match was only clutch on an individual level anyway, because although it tied the team score at 4-4, Vassar dropped the final match and lost, rendering my clutch win irrelevant.

In certain cases, it takes only one spectacular play to earn clutch status as David Tyree did with the “Helmet Catch” in Superbowl XLII.

In last year’s Superbowl, the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger threw a beautiful pass that should have been caught by Santonio Holmes for the game-winning score. Imagine that Roethlisberger doesn’t make the equally spectacular game-winning pass a couple plays later. Is the first throw clutch by Roethlisberger even though Holmes dropped it? Even though Roethlisberger stepped up in that moment to deliver the perfect throw, he is not clutch if it is not completed and they do not win. It becomes a forgotten pass.

I decided to write a Sports Psyc research paper on clutch but my professor shot down that idea because there isn’t much empirical data for clutch performance. That makes sense because clutch is intangible and by definition, cannot be measured like a 40 time.
If clutch does exist, it may be a heightened state of arousal that improves concentration and enhances performance. Think of an average lady lifting up a car to save her child trapped underneath. This clutch phenomenon could be measurable through somatic components such as heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance; but it may be hard to take Tom Brady’s vitals while he’s leading a game-winning drive in a Superbowl.

There is a football scene in the movie The 6th Day starring Arnold Schwarzenegger the Governator (he’s my governor so I can call him that) and the QB has a heads-up display that tells the play and alerts him of blitzes. Perhaps this sort of breakthrough is not far off as helmets are already fitted with radios for calling plays. Researchers have placed sensors in helmets to measure the impact of a hit on the neck and head.

Today, we are probably capable of measuring vitals or even brain activity with EEG (Electroencephalography) by modifying a helmet. Sports psychology awaits that one key innovation that leads to a series of advances in performance studies. This moment of invention that spurs rapid technological advancement is known as the alpha barrier. Only 66 years after the Wright’s first heavier-than-air flight, man landed on the moon. I suspect that Sports Psychology is approaching an alpha barrier breakthrough that may help to explain the clutch phenomenon. For now, clutch is a convenient fiction so I can wait to debunk it.