Vol. 4, Issue 2, Part C (2018)

Abstract
In this study, we assessed the mental toughness between the athletes of open and closed skill sports. Forty (N=40) male athletes of 19 to 24 years of age group (mean ± s: age = 21.1 ± 2.8 years) were purposively sampled to participate in the present study. They were further divided into two groups which includes twenty (n= 20) open skill athletes and twenty (n= 20) closed skill athletes. All the subjects, after having been briefed about the objective and protocol of the study, gave their consent and volunteered to participate in this study. Participants completed the mental toughness battery constructed by Goldberg (1998) ^[12] to measure mental toughness. Statistical technique i.e. the student‘t’ test was applied to find out the significant differences between athletes of open and closed skill sports. To test the hypothesis, the level of significance was set at 0.05. The results revealed significant differences between the athletes of open and closed skill sports on the sub-variables i.e. ability to handle pressure, concentration, confidence, motivation and overall mental toughness. However, insignificant differences were noticed with regard to the sub-variables i.e. reboundability. But while comparing the mean values of both the groups, it has been observed that players of open skill sports have demonstrated better reboundability than the players of closed skill sports. It is concluded from the findings that open skill athletes had significantly higher ability to handle pressure, confidence, motivation and overall mental toughness. Moreover the closed skill athletes had shown greater ability with regard to concentration.