TIPPING POINT:Only those with a sub-Nietzschian belief in the triumph of will, can claim there isn't a whole lot of luck involved in sporting success

IT IS Gary Player’s fault that luck currently gets such a bad rap. Player famously said more he practised, the luckier he got. Thomas Jefferson was similarly dismissive a few centuries ago, and before him no doubt some Greek bod in sandals and a sheet proclaimed an original of the species on fate’s irrelevance.

Anyway, the end result is luck is a cop-out when it comes to explanations for winning and losing. Even Roy Keane got in on the act with that “fail-to-prepare” cant. But he was simply parroting Alex Ferguson. Player is the modern original. Player is a golfer – natch.

Golfers love that stuff. There is a clubhouse type that believes their particular part of the suburb can always be bent to their will: everything in its place, and everyone too, from dictating what clothes otherwise reasonable adults are allowed dress themselves in, to shaping a left-to-right fade, to deciding on the moral uprightness of the membership: these are challenges to overcome with resolution and clear-eyed determination.

And it’s all bogus. In fact it’s worse than that. There’s a narcissism at the heart of such an attitude that contains an overwhelming arrogance. Believing you can overcome through will alone the arbitrariness involved in stomping around this piece of floating rock is a delusion for the uber-up-their-own.

But such Ubermensch are plentiful, and getting more so. Maybe it’s the digital age; all that virtual pliability that’s turning billions into goggle-eyed social-inadequates whose solitary BEAST-ability to LOL while peering intently into 3-D nothingness at thousands of BFs makes those of us less app-literate want to get BAKED off our TITTs.

Here’s a shout to all you computer geeks out there: controlling a iPad is one thing: reality is another. And if stomping solo is an inherent lottery, then doing so when also dependant on the vagaries of a bouncing ball should be a humbling reminder that control can only ever be taken so far.

Except it isn’t like that, is it. In fact acknowledging the reality of sporting luck, or fate, or whatever term suits, is enough to provoke character suspicions; like you’re looking for excuses, or are simply plain bluffing.

Take for example the penalty shoot-outs that have provided many of the highlights of a generally excellent Euro 2012. Only those devoid of imagination could argue taking a spot-kick in such circumstances isn’t a test of nerve. But only those with a sub-Nietzschian belief in the triumph of will, can claim there isn’t a whole lot of luck involved too.

That will always remain the case, no matter how much statistic-fiddling and record-poring goes on nowadays to inform players of various opposition inclinations at spot-kicks, a pursuit hardly unconnected with maintaining statistic-fiddlers and record-porers in gainful employment.

Cesc Fabregas, that most modern and cerebral of players, admitted he changed his mind at the last moment about where he would put the winning penalty against Portugal, and produced perfection, since going in off the post really is unstoppable. But perfection isn’t always required.

How else to explain how Tony Cascarino managed to score a pen in that famous World Cup match in Genoa all those years ago, when he scuttered the ball over the line, conveniently helped by the Romanian goalkeeper jumping out of the way. Cas got praised for his “bottle” on the back of that, when it really was just a hit-and-hope, and a not very well struck hit-and-hope at that.

Yet in that same Euro 2012 Spain-Portugal semi-final last week, Xabi Alonso got tut-tutted for missing the first penalty. This is the same Alonso renowned as one of the cleanest strikers of the ball in world football, with a consistent record of stepping up in shoot-outs. It wasn’t like he hit it badly either. A little high maybe, but to the side, and if the goalkeeper had jumped the other way, no doubt Ray Houghton would have praised it as a perfect “paaaannnaalay”. Yet, Alonso got the thumbs-down from some pundit cod-psychologists.

It is part of the modern jargon of sport, all this isotonic-fuelled concentration on internal monologues, and intrinsic motivation, cue words, processes not outcomes, we-not-me drills, funnelling focus, visualisation and all the other techniques that may be fine and dandy but which incubate an athlete against realising that sometimes simply shit happens.

Remember last year’s British Open when Darren Clarke scuffed a shot between two pot bunkers on route to winning? Just one lousy bounce on a rogue divot would have put that ball into sand, and what might have happened to Clarke’s mental tranquillity then? No doubt the big man’s supposed fragility under the spotlight would have been sagely alluded to and heads would have nodded about him being afraid to win or some such other load of cobblers.

If there’s anyone in world sport who wants success more than Rafa Nadal then they’re not exhibiting it nearly as flamboyantly as the Spaniard, who got knocked out of Wimbledon in the second round by a Czech non-entity who hit everything a resounding clatter and remarkably got most of them between the lines.

Nadal fought with typical grit but ultimately had to conclude it was one of those days when a demonstrably inferior opponent simply squeezed fate’s luck-glands dry, and then squeezed a little more.

Of course it gets tiresome when success is attributed exclusively to luck, a habit adopted by some sportspeople in an attempt at humility but which comes across as insincere. But the opposite is also the case.

Prolonged in-depth research for this piece included a detailed psychological examination of the theory of luck, by means of keying “unlucky sports people” through the sociological prism of Google. It came up with an interesting subject.

Bernard Freyberg was born in England but grew up in New Zealand. A champion swimmer in peacetime, his military experience in WWI included fighting at Gallipoli where he won a medal for swimming to-and-from shore from a ship two miles out to sea while towing rafts carrying oil flares and calcium lights with which to scout enemy positions.

He ended the war a General and in possession of the Victoria Cross. He was in charge of New Zealand forces during WWII and ended up a Baron. But in the inter-war years his big thing apparently was trying to swim the English Channel.

In 1925 and 1926 he made repeated attempts to swim across La Manche but never made it. The closest he ever came was when having braved appalling conditions from Cap Gris Nez, he got to within 500 yards of Dover. Not surprisingly, a bit knackered, he paused for a break while well-wishers in boats cheered him on – but he couldn’t get going again and had to be hauled in and taken to shore.

“The Channel has won again,” read the report in the Times, “but seldom, by those whom it has conquered, was victory so nearly snatched from its grasp.”

These days he’d probably be accused of not wanting it enough, or being a choker. Gary Player would probably call him a slacker, forgetting what he should have learned long ago in his passion away from the golf course, breeding racehorses.

It’s one of the oldest adages in the bloodstock book. You breed the best, to the best – and then hope for the best.