Comparison of Athletes Personality Characteristics

1959-1990 Billie Jean King known for her role as the pioneer of womens tennis, essentially leading to the popularity and relevance of the tour.
1969-1980 Arthur Ashe he was a pioneer for African Americans in tennis, and individual sports in general.
1978-1994 John McEnroe known as the bad boy of tennis, commercialized tennis by becoming a pioneer adopter of Nike and bringing new types of racquets into professional tennis.
1994-currently Venus and Serena Williams brought relevance to the idea of minorities in a majority white sport as well as ushering an era of power athleticism not seen before on the womens tour.
1998-currently Roger Federer considered the maestro of tennis, holds the record for the most Grand Slam titles in men tennis.

Individual and team sports differ significantly, starting with the fact that success or failure depends on teamwork in team sports while individual sports rely solely on the individual athletes performance. While team sports can have brilliant players, the end result often depends on the team as was demonstrated by the 2020 season in European football in which Barcelona failed to win a single title despite having star players including that of Lionel Messi. The player was outspoken about decisions in the team, including play styles, strategic decision-making, and management (Associated Press, 2020).

Meanwhile, individual sports focus on the individual characteristics of the athlete and their ability to utilize their physical and mental strength, because the outcome of the match depends solely on the performance of that one person. Tennis player Novak Djokovic recently commented on the issue, I obviously went through ups and downs in my career in managing to control my emotions more or less but youre alone out there, its a lot of intensity, a lot of pressure and you have to deal with (Morse, 2020). Team sports have certain advantages of being able to mask the performance and influence of worst players if the influence of strong players is able to carry the team. In individual sports, the success or failure is completely individual.

Numerous studies have been conducted, finding that personality characteristics differ between individual and team sports. Individual sport athletes typically test higher in elements of conscientiousness and autonomy. They also demonstrate higher amount of self-reliance, discipline, focus, and sometimes even passion. Team sport athletes score higher on agreeableness and sociotropy (Nia & Besharat, 2010).