The game isn't over 'til it's over
One of the greatest sports events I've ever witnesses happened at the 1975 U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows, New York. That was the year the Spaniard, Manuel Orantes, defeated legendary Jimmy Connors in straight sets (6-4, 6-3, 6-3). Orantes was a clay court specialist, but he defeated Connors on his specialty surface, asphalt, in Connors' own back yard.
But that contest isn't the event I want to tell you about. Beating Connors to win one of the Grand Slam tournaments in tennis couldn't have happened if the day before, against all odds, Orantes had not demonstrated enormous courage and extreme perseverance.
In the semi-final match between Orantes and the Argentinian, Guillermo Vilas, the Spaniard was down two sets to one, five games to zip and 40-love in the sixth game. Vilas was serving triple match point to the seventh power.
If Orantes loses one more point in this game the match is over. And even if he battles back to win this game, he would then have to win the next six games just to push the match to a fifth set and have a chance to advance to the finals. To tennis fans, 2-1, 5-0, 40-love, is an "against all odds" comeback scenario.
Small business owners know how Orantes must have felt. We're no strangers to the marketplace equivalent of "triple match point." It's like losing a major customer, having an unexpected expense and a cash flow crisis resulting in a call from the bank, in the same day. It happens. Indeed, the question is not whether a small business will have triple match point challenges, but rather how well will the owner manage the next one.
Back to the tennis match: In perhaps one of the gutsiest display of guts in the history of tennis, Orantes overcame triple match point to take the sixth game and then proceeded to win the next six in a row to claim the fourth set 7-5. This courageous comeback not only produced the momentum to beat Vilas 6-4 in the final set and get Orantes into the finals with Connors, but, as you now know, it carried over to the next day where he became the 1975 U.S. Open champion by defeating arguably the greatest hard-surface tennis player of all time.
So next time your small business is down triple match point, remember that as long as the game isn't over, you can still win. As long as you have the desire to win, you can gain the momentum to not only win today but to become a champion tomorrow.
Write this on a rock ... Even when you're down triple match point, you can still win.
Jim Blasingame, Creator/Host of The Small Business Advocate Show
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