Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Last week, I had a tutoring session with one of my students who plays Junior Pro tennis and he shared an interesting story about Tennis champion Andy Roddick.

From what I heard from my student, he was playing final round of a Masters tournament in Rome against Fernando Verdasco from Spain. It was a match point in favor of Roddick. Apparently when Roddick hit his second serve, the line umpire had called the ball "out," and the crowd was cheering for Roddick. Verdasco had already moved towards the net to shake hands, as the match appeared to be done.

But Andy Roddick did not accept the point. Instead, he said the ball was "in" and called the umpire's attention to a slight indentation on the clay court which showed that the ball had landed on- not beyond- the line. Surprised by his act, the umpire allowed Roddick to overrule him and the point was awarded to Verdasco.

Everyone was amazed. In a game not typically played on the honor system- but on the umpire's calls- Roddick has made a call against himself and went on to lose the match.  The actual story is found here.

Though he lost the match he gained credibility and trust which is far greater. My dad would call this as good sportsmanship by Roddick as demonstrated through his action.

One of my favorite chapters in Math is Congruent triangles. For some reason, I always love the word 'Congruent'. Congruent triangles means one and the same.They have exactly the same size and shape. Two triangles are congruent when the three sides and the three angles of one triangle have the same measurements as three sides and three angles of another triangle.

When a person is congruent,  there is no gap between the intent and the behavior. People who are congruent work in sync with their deepest values and beliefs.  When we consistently demonstrate inner congruence to our belief systems and to principles, we inspire trust in both professional and personal relationships. When somebody does that, it tells the world that they are strong, solid and dependable and they are certain to have positive results which instills confidence in other people.