Journal of the Philosophy of Sport

ISSN: 0094-8705 (Print) 1543-2939 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjps20

Deserving to Be Lucky: Reflections on the Role of

Luck and Desert in Sports

Robert Simon

To cite this article: Robert Simon (2007) Deserving to Be Lucky: Reflections on the
Role of Luck and Desert in Sports, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 34:1, 13-25, DOI:
10.1080/00948705.2007.9714706

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2007.9714706

Published online: 19 Jan 2012.

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 Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 2007, 34, 13-25 
© 2007 International Association for the Philosophy of Sport

Deserving to Be Lucky: Reflections on the

Role of Luck and Desert in Sports1
Robert Simon
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Does luck spoil sport? For example, a tightly fought soccer game goes into the
last few seconds tied. A player has a long but open shot on goal but his kick results
in a poorly struck shot that is off line and too high. But as he kicks, the wind changes
direction and an unexpected gust shifts his ball back on goal. Its erratic path allows
it to escape the goalkeeper’s desperate dive. The kick was not particularly skillful,
but the wind gust led to victory. Did the better team win or was the game marred
by luck, good for one team and bad for the other but deserved by neither?
That luck spoils the sports contest, or at least tends to undermine its point,
follows from what might be called the Skill Thesis. According to the Skill Thesis,
competitive sports contests are tests of the competitors’ skills designed to determine
which opponent is more skillful in the sport being played. If a contest is decided
by luck, it has not determined which of the participants is most skillful and so the
game is spoiled or, at the very least, has not determined which of the competitors
has best met the test of competition. As Nicholas Dixon recently argued, “unlucky
losers . . . provide another category of failed athletic contests” (4: p. 17). Some of
my own remarks, such as the claim that “competition in sports is supposed to be
a test of the athletic ability of persons,” also suggest such a view (10: p. 83). Does
luck spoil the sports contest? If so, as Sigmund Loland has asked, should the pos-
sible influence of luck on sports, good and bad, be minimized (5: p. 88)?
Concerns about the role of luck in sport, as Dixon has pointed out, reflect larger
concerns about how luck should influence our moral evaluations—concerns raised
famously by Thomas Nagel in his paper “Moral Luck” (6). If A and B both drive
while intoxicated, and A hits a pedestrian but B, who is just as intoxicated as A,
does not injure anyone simply through pure luck, is B any less blameworthy than
A? If we view even our character and our skills as unearned consequences of what
Rawls has called “the natural lottery,” it remains unclear how much of our behavior
is truly under our control and how much is attributable to the luck of the draw.
Indeed, if one pushes the natural-lottery argument hard enough, it suggests that
desert is not a fundamental moral notion and perhaps not applicable to the world
of sport at all. If so, the athlete or team that plays best cannot deserve to win in any
important sense, because the notion of desert has, at most, limited applicability to
sport, and perhaps to all other areas of life, as well. So while the Skill Thesis may
suggest that luck spoils the game, some versions of the lottery argument suggest
that because of the luck of the initial draw of talents, skills, and abilities, overall

The author <rsimon@hamilton.edu> is with the Dept. of Philosophy, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
13323.

    13
 14   Simon

outcomes in sports ultimately are more the result of luck than we might think. If so,
the significance of claims of athletic desert and merit is greatly reduced, assuming
they are not expelled from the playing field altogether.
On the contrary, I first want to support and further develop the view, also
advanced by Sigmund Loland (5: esp. pp. 87–92), that luck may not always under-
mine the good sports contest in the way suggested previously, and in some of its
manifestations, may even be compatible with the Skill Thesis.2 It all depends on the
kind of luck involved. Indeed, in some cases, it may be plausible to say the athlete
in question deserved to be lucky. Second, I want to question whether plausible ver-
sions of the lottery argument do eliminate or significantly reduce the significance
of desert claims in sports and athletics. While I realize that my arguments need
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fuller development, I hope to at least ask enough questions to suggest that the role
of luck in sports raises issues that may be both complex and interesting and warrant
further exploration within the discipline.

Does Luck Spoil the Game? Tiger Woods

and the 2005 Masters
What I believe will stand as one of the most famous shots ever hit in the history
of golf was pulled off by Tiger Woods in the final round of the 2005 Masters Tour-
nament. Woods, in position to win the tournament, had hit his tee shot over the par
three 16th green into a position from which it looked nearly impossible to recover
in two shots for a needed par. He was in thick grass behind a severely sloped green,
with the hole cut down the slope only a few feet from the pond guarding the side
of the green. To even get close to the hole, Woods would have to hit his shot high
on the left, away from the hole, and judge the speed of the severe slope perfectly.
If he hit the shot too hard, it might roll into the water, which would surely cost him
the tournament. But if he tried too hard to avoid the water and left his putt above
the hole, he would have an extremely difficult downhill putt to save par with the
same water hazard still lurking behind the hole. Unbelievably, his shot rolled into
the hole on its very last turn, giving him a score of one under par for the hole and
allowing him to eventually win the event in a play-off against Chris DiMarco.
I suggest that there is an important sense in which Woods’s shot was lucky
and also an important sense in which, if he did not actually deserve to be lucky,
the luck in question actually enhances the sports contest in a way compatible with
the Skill Thesis and so is morally dissimilar to the fluky gust of wind in the earlier
soccer example.
That Tiger Woods hit a superb shot was not lucky. For now, however, let us
assume that it was lucky that the ball actually went in the hole. Woods might hit a
much higher percentage of shots in that situation that would end up near the hole
or roll just by it than any average player and a slightly higher percentage than most
highly skilled players when placed under the sort of pressure he was under at the
time. Still, even Tiger Woods might have to hit shots for hours, perhaps days, before
he might actually hole another shot from that position, even in a practice session
with no competitive pressure. It is plausible to think that while it was not lucky
that he hit a good shot, perhaps a shot few if any other players could have pulled
off in that situation, he was lucky that the shot went in.
 Deserving to Be Lucky    15

Assuming that it was lucky that Woods holed the shot, there is a sense in
which he deserved to be lucky, or if that is too paradoxical a way of putting it, his
good luck does not undermine the Skill Thesis. The reason for this is suggested by
famous golfer Gary Player’s claim, “The more I practice the luckier I get.” Because
Woods (and perhaps only Woods) has the skills to hit a high percentage of shots that
have a chance to go in, he is able to give himself a better chance to be lucky than
anyone else. So, when he does get the luck, he deserves it more than other players.
Or, perhaps better, part of the explanation of why he was lucky is his level of skill.
Accordingly, his luck does not undermine the Skill Thesis, but, on the contrary,
his skill is what enables him to be lucky more often than others.
But is this really a case of luck? Why not just say that the shot reflected Woods’s
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skill. Although it was improbable, it was not lucky. Luck was not involved, only
ability. Such a view may even have been expressed by Tiger’s competitor, Chris
DiMarco, who when reflecting on the shot told an interviewer, “Believe it or not,
when he made that shot I was ready for it. . . . When Tiger made it, it was sure
unexpected but there you’ve got to say, OK, you’re playing Tiger Woods and he’s
going to do things like that.”3
On this view, my example is flawed because it confuses improbability of
success with luck. Thus, it is improbable that a pitcher will throw a no-hitter in
a Major League Baseball game, but if the pitcher succeeds, it is at least largely
through skill, not luck.
This last remark has several implications, however. First, the use of the expres-
sion “largely through skill” suggests that many sports achievements involve an ele-
ment of luck. Even in a no-hitter, opposing batters often make solid contact only to
see their line drives go right at a waiting fielder. Woods himself frequently has said
that there is an element of luck in any tournament win. It seems that achievements
in sport usually reflect varying degrees of skill and luck. If so, most contests involve
an element of luck: Luck admits of degrees. The pitcher had a bit of luck in that
all three of the opponents’ solid hits went directly to a fielder, but, otherwise, the
no-hitter was the result of skill. In another game, however, luck can play a larger
role, as when one baseball team continually hits weak bloopers that just happen to
fall between the fielders.
In any case, the thesis that luck does not always ruin or even negatively affect
the game and that some luck can be, in a sense, deserved does not rest entirely on
the Woods example. Perhaps what that example does show, however, is that the
line between luck and skill cannot always be easily drawn and that many sports
actions may reflect varying elements of both.
Given that, we can distinguish between strong and weak amendments to the
Skill Thesis. According to the strong version, elite athletes can deserve to be lucky
in that their skill level is such that they give themselves the best chance for good
luck to strike—a far better chance than most other competitors. According to the
weak version, although it may not be warranted to talk of deserving to be lucky,
at least sometimes a lucky play can be compatible with the Skill Thesis since the
kind of luck in question is not a fluke. Rather, it results from skilled athletes giving
themselves the best chance for a fortunate outcome.
To make this point more plausible, consider a different version of our original
example where a fluky gust of wind determines the outcome of a soccer game.
Suppose again that the game is played on an exceedingly windy day, which makes
 16   Simon

it nearly impossible for all but the most skilled players to control shots from any-
where but short range. This time, however, our shooter is one of the elite players
and, in fact, can control her shots better than anyone else on the field. This time
she shoots from some distance from the goal, and although her shot looks like it
will miss, she was the only player in the game who could even have come close
from that distance. Suddenly, however, the wind gusts, diverting the shot past the
now out-of-position goalkeeper and into the net for the winning shot. Didn’t this
shooter deserve to be lucky since it was only through skill that she was able to
place the ball in a position where luck could take effect? In fact, she was the only
one on the field who could have done so. Or, if you find the idea of deserving to
be lucky too paradoxical, shouldn’t you at least concede that her shot did not spoil
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the game? In fact, as the weaker amendment suggests, isn’t the victory compatible
with the Skill Thesis? Even though the outcome was decided in part by luck, an
unexpected wind gust, it was the shooter’s skill that put her in position for luck to
strike. (Surely this case differs from the one in which a poorly struck shot is pushed
into the net by an unexpected gust of wind. In this sort of case, the game was won
because of a fluke. This contrasts with the case in which the athlete’s skill created
the opportunity for luck to strike.)
Even if the argument as made so far is granted, however, we can question
whether the role of luck ought to be minimized in sport. Here it is important to
distinguish what I would call a fluke, having nothing to do with the skill of the
athlete, from what I have suggested is deserved luck or what might be called
positional luck (since it arises from the skill of putting oneself in a position to be
lucky).4 The case for eliminatism, the view that the role of luck in sport should be
eliminated or at least minimized, surely is strongest when applied to flukes since,
by definition, they do not arise from the skills of the athletes and hence appear to
violate the Skill Thesis.
Even here, however, the case for eliminatism is far from self-evident. For one
thing, the possibility of a fluke’s determining an outcome of a contest introduces
an element of uncertainty that can make the game more exciting for spectators and
participants alike. Moreover, it may promote a desirable degree of humility among
even the most successful athletes and create an appreciation for the often arbitrary
contingencies that can affect human life. Finally, even flukes can be regarded as
compatible with a broad interpretation of the Skill Thesis. Even if a contest is
decided by a fluke, that does not reflect in any way the skill of the players in that
event. How the athletes react to it in future contests may indicate how well they
meet the test set by competitive sport. Is the loser destroyed by a fluky loss in a
crucial contest, or can he or she overcome bad fortune and rise to new heights in
the future? Do the beneficiaries of flukes become overconfident, and as a result
do they lose to supposedly inferior opponents in the future? In other words, if we
view the test of sport as extending beyond a specific contest to a series of contests,
a season, or even a career, flukes can be part of the test of athletic competition.5
Of course, such brief remarks are not determinative, but they at least suggest
that eliminatism faces difficulties even when only flukes are at issue. The case for
eliminatism is even weaker where positional luck is at issue. If the considerations
advanced earlier have force, luck of this sort reflects the skill of the athlete and
may even be deserved.
 Deserving to Be Lucky    17

Consider a second issue. Is the degree to which positional or deserved luck

should be tolerated, welcomed, or minimized relative to the sport being played?
Should soccer games be held in enclosed arenas whenever possible to minimize the
effects of weather? Should golf courses be designed to reward similar shots similarly
or should the luck of the bounce be incorporated into course design, as in traditional
Scottish link courses? That is, we might have choices in the way we situate or set
up sports contests that allow greater or lesser roles for positional luck. As the sports
relativist contends, the degree to which restrictions are desirable may vary from
sport to sport. It might be plausibly argued, for example, that in short timed events,
such as a 100-yard dash, we should want to virtually eliminate luck from affecting
the contest since, or so it might be argued, there is virtually no way competitors
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can react to its influence in the brief time in which the event transpires.6
Although I cannot discuss this sort of sports relativism extensively here and
would not reject it out of hand, the previous arguments suggest that positional luck
(and perhaps even flukes) may play a desirable role in virtually all athletic contests.
In addition to the suspense added to contests for spectators and participants, luck
can often also add to the nature of the test faced by athletes, even in events such as
sprints in track or swimming. Thus, suppose in a sprint event at an intercollegiate
swim meet, three swimmers, A, B, and C, are the top contenders to win. Swimmer
A unfortunately starts falsely (and as a result is disqualified). B is momentarily
distracted by A’s false start, but C maintains concentration and wins by a small
margin. In a sense, A’s false start was luck from the perspective of B and C, who
are not responsible for it. Be that as it may, C, by maintaining concentration more
fully than B, met the test constituted by the event and in this sense deserved to win
even though C might not have won if B had maintained concentration to a similar
extent. So, against both eliminatism and strong versions of sports relativism, posi-
tional luck can play a role compatible with the Skill Thesis even in events such
as sprints where the claims of sports relativism might have seemed to have their
clearest application.7
I conclude, then, that luck does not always spoil a good sports contest and does
not always show that the best athletes failed to win. As Loland puts it, “Where luck
follows skill, there is no serious threat to . . . meritocratic distribution of advantage”
(5: p. 88). Rather, the abilities of skilled athletes created the potential for luck to
work in their favor, and so on the stronger version of my thesis, they did deserve
to be lucky. At the very least (on the weaker version), they met the challenge of
the contest better than their opponents. In such cases, luck does not spoil the game
but can even enhance it and make us appreciate the skills of the successful players
even more than otherwise.8

The Place of Desert in Sport

The idea that some athletes deserve to be lucky presupposes that desert can
play a role in competitive sport. We speak of some competitors deserving to win,
or not deserving to lose, or of superior athletes deserving the MVP award. We
compare the merits of top players and think that normally the most meritorious
player deserves the most recognition. But is this kind of talk, or at least much of it,
 18   Simon

based on a mistaken presupposition? To paraphrase the title of a recent article that

appeared in this journal, “where is the desert when the best man wins?” (2)
Of particular interest, to me at least, is skepticism about the role of desert
in sport arising from the kinds of concerns raised by John Rawls in A Theory of
Justice. These arise from what has been called the natural lottery, that is, the initial
distribution of genetic endowments and favorable environmental circumstances
into which the individual is born. Since these factors were not under the person’s
control, he or she can claim no credit for them or for the benefits that arise largely
as a result of their influence. More strictly, as George Sher has formulated the
argument, if one individual has a competitive advantage over another due to dif-
ferences in initial circumstances that were under the control of neither, the favored
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individual can claim no credit for the successes that flow from that undeserved
head start (8: pp. 362–364).
Many of us would reply that in athletics it is not our initial innate talent that
determines athletic success but what we do with it—how hard we work to develop it,
our choice of strategies, our commitment to training, and the like. Rawls responds,
however, that “the assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables
him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is equally problematic: for his
character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for
which he can claim no credit” (7: p. 104).
It is unclear, however, how such remarks of Rawls are to be taken. I doubt
that they express an overall commitment to some form of hard determinism or
incompatibilism. After all, Rawls’s focus in A Theory of Justice is on assessing the
fairness or unfairness of structural inequalities in the basic structure of societies, not
on defending a metaphysical approach to free will. If so, the natural-lottery argu-
ment is best understood as an appeal to our considered judgment that in a system
where initial advantages are unfairly distributed, the claims of the successful that
they deserve to be on top should at best be taken with a large grain of salt. Perhaps
even in such an unfair system, someone can deserve praise for individual moral
choices—for example, for helping someone in trouble—but large-scale economic
success and failure averaged over a large population are often or generally the result
of unearned initial circumstances for which we can take no credit.
Whether or not this was Rawls’s view, David Carr recently has criticized
attributions of desert in competitive sport on the grounds that outcomes in athlet-
ics reflect and frequently are best explained by unearned initial distributions of
talents and abilities for which the competitors can take no credit. Carr’s article is
interesting and important, not only because of its analytic acuity but also because
it draws out the apparent implications for desert from some apparently simple and
plausible assumptions.
Carr himself denies that he is a hard determinist or that he rejects all applica-
tions of the concept of personal responsibility. Rather, Carr acknowledges that
some qualities, let us call them moral qualities, are under the athlete’s control. He
specifically mentions courage and self-control and presumably would allow other
qualities such as dedication, commitment, integrity, and the capacity to maintain
composure and focus in the face of difficulty, as well. However, Carr suggests that
not only innate athletic ability but also such qualities as the ability to see and take
advantage of strategic opportunities (strategic intelligence) or the ability to benefit
 Deserving to Be Lucky    19

from repetitive training, drills, and exercises reflect initial endowments and so are
undeserved. As Carr says of strategic intelligence, “there is no reason—assuming
such intelligence to be the usual mixture of training and native wit—to give him
or her any special credit for it” (2: p. 6).
Do such arguments, based on our lack of responsibility for our initial endow-
ments of skills and abilities, undermine the legitimacy of most attributions of desert
in sport? In a sense, is athletic success largely the result of the luck of the initial
draw? Are claims that a particular athlete or team deserved to win or deserved the
award (or deserved to lose) always or almost always inapplicable or illegitimate?
I suggest not.
Any theory that seeks to undermine claims of desert based on the morally
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arbitrary initial distribution of natural and social assets without falling into a
version of hard determinism or total rejection of personal responsibility needs to
distinguish, as Carr attempts to, between characteristics that are and are not under
an individual’s control. However, it is far from clear how this is to be done in a
satisfactory way.
For example, is there a sharp distinction between self-control, which Carr
regards as a moral property for whose exercise we are responsible, and a broad
understanding of strategic intelligence, thought of as the ability to best use one’s
other assets as the competitive situation of the sports contest dictates? On the con-
trary, it would seem that the ability to control one’s emotions is itself an important
component of strategic intelligence. Moreover, self-control is the kind of trait that
may well be influenced at least as much by one’s genetic endowment or early child-
hood education as the development of strategic intelligence itself.
Rather than simply assuming that one ability, the ability to keep one’s cool
under pressure, is entirely our responsibility, and the other, the ability to recognize
and take advantage of strategic possibilities, is entirely out of our control, a more
flexible interactive model seems at least as plausible. Moral qualities such as self-
control, mental toughness, and ability (or even the courage) to see the situation
as it is and not as the athlete would like it to be are all components of strategic
intelligence. Doesn’t the capacity (or meta-ability) of top athletes to use their other
abilities intelligently seem on the face of it to be as much under their control as
what Carr has called moral qualities such as courage, dedication, or integrity?
Of course, the natural lottery may play some role in influencing how each of
these characteristics develops. But, assuming that we reject hard determinism, it
would seem that the most the critic of desert is entitled to conclude is that we do
not deserve total credit for our achievements in athletics, rather than that we do not
deserve any credit for them. Surely, some of the credit for Tiger Woods’s fabulous
shot in the 2005 Masters goes to his father Earl for his enormous influence on
Woods’s development. But Woods’s control under pressure, his ability to focus,
and the dedication and practice that enabled him to hone his skills and develop
his innate talent surely are at least partly to his credit, as well. At the very least,
we have not been shown a plausible place to draw the line between those moral
qualities, allegedly under the athlete’s control, and strategic capacities, allegedly
the result of the natural lottery or the luck of the draw.
This point is reinforced by George Sher’s observation that in any complex
activity or practice, there are multiple combinations of talents, skills, and capacities
 20   Simon

that can contribute to success (8: pp. 370–373). In athletics, one player may have
more innate ability than others, but her competitors may have different combina-
tions of characteristics, such as the capacity to exert greater effort or the patience
and courage to develop new techniques even if the learning process may involve
temporary setbacks. These qualities may allow them to overcome their initial
disadvantage in native talent. Accordingly, if we acknowledge that some of the
factors contributing to athletic success are under the athlete’s control and that these
include higher order capacities grouped under the umbrella concept of strategic
capabilities, athletic performance is not simply the result of the natural lottery and
is often the sort of activity for which participants can claim at least partial credit
(or take at least partial blame).
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Of particular interest in this context is the point made by my colleague at

Hamilton College, sociologist Dan Chambliss, in his award winning book, Cham-
pions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers. In his book, Chambliss describes his
experiences as an observer at the Mission Viejo swim club during the selection
of swimmers for the American team in the 1984 Olympic Games (3). During his
study, Chambliss attended virtually all team practices and meetings and had full
access to athletes and coaches. His special interest was to advance a theory as to
why some athletes made the Olympic team and others did not.
In a chapter titled “The Mundanity of Excellence,” Chambliss argued that
differences in natural ability do relatively little to explain who made the cut and
who did not. Indeed, past a certain surprisingly minimal point, adding time to
workouts had little if any effect. Rather, he found that such factors as not cutting
corners in practice (for example, using perfect form in making turns rather than
being sloppy), changing techniques, and favorable attitudes toward practice (i.e.,
regarding practice not as a chore but as one of the centers of the athlete’s social
life) all played major roles.
Chambliss’s work suggests that the kinds of factors most clearly affected by
the natural lottery or the luck of the draw, such as innate ability and innate character
traits, play only a partial role in affecting athletic outcome. Other factors includ-
ing psychological and moral ones that are likely to be under the athlete’s control,
such as the willingness to treat each practice as if it were an actual contest, play a
significant role, as well.9
So far, I have argued that there is no clear line distinguishing the characteristics
that are most affected by the natural lottery or luck of the draw, such as innate ability
and those that Carr admits are under the athletes’ control, such as moral qualities.
I also have suggested that strategic capacities should be regarded as at least partly
in the latter group and, along with the kinds of factors studied by Chambliss, may
affect athletic success at least as much as innate abilities and capacities. This
point is reinforced by Sher’s argument about plural paths to success, which also
suggests that it is how one uses one’s gifts, and not the mere possession of them,
that is crucial.
Of course, some may reject the whole distinction between what is under our
control and what is not, perhaps because they think such a distinction applies to
the world only if causal determinism is false, and they believe causal determinism
is true. What I have argued is that if the distinction does make sense, which Carr
explicitly allows and which I believe Rawls might have acknowledged, as well,
there is room for merit-based claims of desert in competitive athletics.
 Deserving to Be Lucky    21

Let me also suggest, although briefly, that a conceptual framework that allows
for claims of desert based on our responsibility for some of our actions may have
a moral rather than a metaphysical base and so be defensible regardless of the
truth of determinism. That is, the distinction between what is and is not under our
control may be justified by what might be called its moral function rather than its
metaphysical basis or appropriateness.
An analogy with the law of torts may be useful here. Torts is that area of law
where it is determined who should bear the costs of an injury. For example, should it
be the injured person (as when I hit my thumb with a hammer) or another agent (as
when you carelessly swing your hammer, not noticing my thumb is in the way).
One approach to determining who should bear the cost is to find the real cause
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of the injury. If the real or true cause is my action, I am responsible and should bear
the cost, but if the real cause is your action, you are responsible and should bear
the cost. A problem with this approach is that it may not be a simple matter of fact
which contributing factor is the real cause. Were you to blame for not checking that
my thumb was out of the way before you swung your hammer, or should I have
taken more care in keeping my thumb to myself once I saw you were carrying a
hammer? The issue seems to be a moral one, not one of simple causation.10
Thus, on a second approach, we can think of torts as the attempt to distribute
the costs of injury fairly. On this view, it is more akin to a moral than a metaphysical
enterprise. Thus, if a golfer is struck by another player’s errant shot, who should
bear the costs of the injury? Courts have ruled that as long as players take due care
to warn others of mishit shots, usually by calling out a warning, they normally are
not responsible for injuries caused by their wild slices or hooks. Rather, there are
certain risks inherent in golf, and golfers are regarded as voluntarily assuming
them when entering the course. Right or wrong, this seems like a moral argument
about assuming responsibility for one’s actions. On this view, the law of torts is
moral, not metaphysical.
A similar approach can be applied to desert claims in sports. One traditional
line of argument that reflects this approach attempts to reconcile determinism
with responsibility and personal desert by relying on utilitarianism. For example,
rewarding merit (and in some cases penalizing substandard behavior) may create
incentives for acting in desirable ways and so improve the general welfare. However,
even many of those favorably disposed to some forms of utilitarianism find such
an approach unsatisfactory, since it at most seems to show that it is useful to treat
people as responsible agents, not that it also is fair or just to do so.
A second nonutilitarian approach may be more successful in providing an
ethical basis for desert claims. This approach ties the practice of acknowledging
our deserts to the Rawlsian primary good of self-respect. Thus, it is noteworthy
that in A Theory of Justice, Rawls rests his argument for the principle of equal
opportunity, which in his theory takes priority over other aspects of his difference
principle, to self-respect. For example, he argues that
If some places were not open on a basis fair to all, those kept out would be
right in feeling unjustly treated even though they benefited from the greater
efforts of those who were allowed to hold them. . . . They would be justified
in their complaint . . . because they were debarred from experiencing the
realization of self which comes from a skillful and devoted exercise of social
duties. (7: p. 84)
 22   Simon

However, if a realization of self comes from “a skillful and devoted exercise of

social duties,” isn’t that because we take pride in our performance or at least view
it as something for which we are responsible? It is not viewed merely as some-
thing that happens to us but something we do. My suggestion is that taking this
responsibility perspective is justifiable not primarily, or at least not only, because
it reflects debatable metaphysical presuppositions but rather because it promotes
self-respect and assigns due weight to what might be regarded as the central char-
acteristics of personhood.
That is, if individuals are to be treated as persons such that it is appropriate
for them to find fulfillment and satisfaction through their actions, characteristics
we regard as central to their personhood, such as character and choices, must be
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attributed to the person. Thus, our voluntary actions reflect our status as persons and
are not events that merely happen to us. The practice of assigning deserts according
to merit is an important way of assigning weight to those central characteristics
of personhood and so is justifiable by reference to the ethical importance of that
assignment.11 As competitors in sport, we react to the choices and strategies of
others, decide which of our skills to develop and how to do so, and employ the
various forms of strategic intelligence. Thus, if Rawls’s point is correct, sports, or
at least certain instances of sporting activity, are paradigmatic activities in which we
express the core qualities of personhood and find fulfillment through doing so.
We may wonder, at this point, whether sport plays a unique or at least special
role in allowing for the expression of our personhood and in promoting self-respect.
This question needs to be explored more fully than I am able to do at present, but
perhaps the following brief comments might suggest lines of inquiry that warrant
further examination. While I doubt that any claim of uniqueness can be justified, a
more plausible claim is that competitive sport, when carried out within an appro-
priate moral framework, does have certain features that enable it to play a special
role regarding self-respect. These features have been emphasized in much of the
literature on the ethics of sport but, when conjoined, constitute a highly plausible
basis for assigning sport a special role in this area. In particular, a well-designed
sport provides a complex variety of challenges to participants that call on them to
make intelligent choices about strategies, about the intentions of opponents, about
how to react to moves made by the opposition, and about which skills to develop
and exercise in particular contexts. Accordingly, when we freely enter sporting
competition with due regard for meeting its internal goals (meeting the challenges
of the sport), we are called on to express deep features of our character as persons
while reacting to other competitors who also exercise similar traits of personhood
and who facilitate our own development by contributing to the sporting challenges
we face.12 My own suggestion for developing such a line of argument further would
be to explore its relation to Peter Strawson’s influential distinction between the
participant perspective, in which “reactive attitudes” such as gratitude presuppose
an internal perspective of the person, and the objective attitude, which does not.13
While I hope such a suggestion proves fruitful, the major argument made
here is that desert-based claims of merit should be recognized in sport because
the practice of doing so is crucial to such goods as self-respect, fulfillment, and
mutual acknowledgment of our status as persons. As Claudia Card suggests, “the
recognition of one’s deserts is . . . important to one’s self-respect, even to one’s
 Deserving to Be Lucky    23

personal integrity and identity, just as recognition of oneself as politically the equal
of one’s peers (also) is important to one’s self-respect” (1: p. 188).
But is this to misunderstand Rawls’s suggestion about self-fulfillment? Perhaps
Rawls’s point is not that we should take pride in our achievements, which may
be largely due to the luck of the draw in the natural lottery, but that carrying out
socially useful tasks and exercising skills is something from which humans gain
respect and that they find fulfilling. Thus, I find it fulfilling to be a good adviser to
students and gain respect from the fact that I am doing something useful, without
taking pride in my activity, thinking I deserve some special reward for it. Perhaps
the respect and fulfillment come from contributing to a greater good or doing
something useful rather than pride in one’s merit. And of course, one might argue,
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sport does not contribute to a greater good in the same way as medicine, science,
teaching, and other forms of useful work.
However, it is hard to see why we would gain self-respect or self-fulfillment
from an activity that did not reflect back on our core personal qualities; it might be
appropriate to be glad that we are contributing to a greater good, but to get fulfill-
ment and respect from the skillful exercise of our talent (rather than merely from
some activity we just happen to be engaged in), which is what Rawls refers to in his
own discussion, requires us to view our relevant behavior as our own acts, which
in turn opens us to the possibility of receiving credit or blame for them. If so, the
recognition of merit in sport may be appropriate not just because it recognizes that
some areas of our life may be under our control (which hard determinism denies)
but also because at its best sport constitutes a practice in which we recognize our-
selves as persons and treat others in ways that generate self-respect, fulfillment,
and mutual acknowledgment of our common personhood.
It might also be objected that this line of argument does not show that we actu-
ally deserve anything in sport but only that there is a moral case for treating us as
if we have legitimate claims of desert. That is, just as utilitarianism shows at most
that it is useful to recognize claims of desert (as incentives or disincentives), so
the present argument only shows that it is fair or just to give some weight to desert
claims. Neither argument, however, shows that we actually deserve anything.14
This sort of objection has considerable force, but perhaps it begs the question
by assuming that the real basis of desert must be metaphysical (free will?) rather
than moral. That is, if the practice of assigning weight to claims of desert has a
moral basis “all the way down,” then we do sometimes deserve certain responses to
our performances, just as certain distributions are fair if they satisfy the appropri-
ate criteria of fairness. If this line of response is correct, or even on the right track,
when we say, for example, that Tiger Woods deserved to win the 2005 Masters, we
are making a moral claim that stands or falls on the worth of the moral arguments
supporting it and those supporting the overall practice of acknowledging desert,
within which it falls.

Concluding Comment
I have argued here, or perhaps better have presented sketches of how a more
fully worked out argument might go, for two conclusions. First, following a line of
thought suggested by Sigmund Loland (5: particularly pp. 87–92), I have maintained
 24   Simon

that luck does not always spoil an athletic contest but can often enhance our appre-
ciation for the skills of top performers who, in a sense, can “deserve to be lucky.”15
Second, I have suggested that attempts to expunge the idea of desert (and claims of
merit based on it) from sports by appeal to natural-lottery-type arguments should
be viewed skeptically. If this second line of argument has force, it reinforces the
conviction that sports, while lacking the instrumental value of activities such as
education and medicine, have a value of their own. In them, we express our nature as
persons when we freely attempt to meet challenges for their own sake and exercise
deep human capacities in doing so.
While excessive pride in achievement is a vice and modesty a virtue, the influ-
ence of luck on individual athletic contests and, on a broader scale, through the
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natural lottery does not rule out the role of merit and desert in sport.16 Although
many factors may influence the outcome of athletic contests, and desert is seldom the
whole story (hence, modesty is appropriate after success in sport), desert need not
be entirely absent, either. Sometimes, the best competitors deserve the trophy.

Notes
1. This address was given as the Warren P. Fraleigh Distinguished Scholar Lecture for the
International Association for the Philosophy of Sport, Niagara Falls, Canada, September 2006. I
am grateful for the many acute questions from the audience during discussion, as well as from a
referee for this journal, and regret that I am unable to examine all of them here. I am also grateful
to Hamilton College for a faculty fellowship that helped support work on this essay.
2. Loland, like myself, thinks that the influence of luck does not always spoil a sports contest
and can sometimes enhance it, and hence the influence of luck should not be eliminated but
“optimized” (5: p. 91). However, while Loland acknowledges that luck sometimes can follow
skill, I believe I draw a tighter connection between the exercise of skill and ensuing luck than
he might wish to acknowledge and do not know if he would endorse the “strong” version of my
thesis, namely, that a skilled athlete can deserve to be lucky.
3. Chris DiMarco quoted in “All the Right Stuff,” Golf Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 4 (April 2006),
p. 87.
4. The expression “positional luck” was suggested by a referee for this journal.
5. On this point, see also Loland’s discussion (5: pp. 100–102).
6. In discussion after the Fraleigh Lecture, Gunnar Breivik suggested that luck does and per-
haps should play varying degrees in different sports, and I am grateful to him, and to a referee
for this journal, for calling such a view to my attention. For further consideration of this issue,
see Loland’s discussion (5: particularly pp. 87–92).
7. The idea for this example emerged from a suggestion by former Hamilton College swim
coach David Thompson, although he himself had some doubt as to whether the false start was a
genuine instance of luck.
8. Nicholas Rescher has distinguished luck from fortune. On Rescher’s distinction, you are
lucky if you win the lottery but are fortunate if you will gain a large inheritance from wealthy
relatives. “Luck is a matter of having something good or bad happen that lies outside the horizon
of effective forseeability. . . . You are fortunate if something good happens to you or for you in the
natural course of things” (6: p. 28). On this view, Woods’s shot in the 2005 Masters was lucky,
but it was not luck that Tiger Woods has become a great golfer, although it surely is fortunate for
him (and for golf fans) that he has done so.
 Deserving to Be Lucky    25

9. I myself think Chambliss may assign too low a role to natural ability (after all, the athletes
he studied may have been preselected at least partly on the basis of such ability), but even if that
is right, he still can be correct in arguing that other factors also play a significant role in affecting
athletic success.
10. Such a view is suggested, for example, by William Prosser when he writes that “the real
basis of negligence is . . . behavior which should be recognized as involving unreasonable danger
to others” (italics my own), William Prosser, “Negligence” from his The Law of Torts, 4th ed.
(West Publishing Company, 1971), reprinted in John Arthur and William Shaw, eds., Readings
in the Philosophy of Law (NJ: Pearson, Prentice-Hall, 2006) p. 409, and by Jules L. Coleman’s
and Jeffrie G. Murphy’s discussions of assigning the cost of automobile accidents, particularly
in their Philosophy of Law (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 149–161.
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11. I have argued more fully for this point elsewhere. (See 9: pp. 224–241).
12. A referee for this journal raised the intriguing question of whether the exercise of either
chemically or genetically enhanced skills and talents would have a similar tie to self-respect.
13. See Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” in G. Watson, ed. Free Will. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1982, 59–80.
14. I owe this point both to my colleague Richard Werner and to Jeffrey Frye, who raised it
during discussion at the Fraleigh lecture. I would not have appreciated its force without their
criticism.
15. As Steven Mumford pointed out at the Fraleigh lecture, an element of luck may make the
contest more interesting to spectators by generating uncertainty, perhaps by enhancing the chances
of an upset. See also Loland (5: p. 91) for a similar point.
16. Thus, whether desert should be the dominant factor in distributing rewards and punishment
in any endeavor or social practice may depend on our evaluation of the overall fairness of the
practice. My claim is not that desert should or should always be the only or even the dominant
principle of distribution, even in sports, but rather that it is among the principles that need to be
counted and given weight.

References
1. Card, Claudia. “Individual Entitlements in Justice as Fairness” In Victoria Davion and
Clark Wolf (Eds.). The Idea of a Political Liberalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000, 176-189.
2. Carr, David. “Where’s the Merit if the Best Man Wins?” Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport, XXVI, 1999, 1-9.
3. Chambliss, Dan. Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers. New York: Harper
Collins, 1988.
4. Dixon, Nicholas. “On Winning and Athletic Superiority.” Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport, XXVI, 1999, 10-26.
5. Loland, Sigmund. Fair Play in Sport: A Moral Norm System. New York: Routledge,
2002.
6. Nagel, Thomas. “Moral Luck” in Nagel’s Mortal Questions. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
7. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
8. Sher, George. “Effort, Ability, and Personal Desert” Philosophy and Public Affairs,
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9. Simon, Robert L. “An Indirect Defense of the Merit Principle” The Philosophical
Forum, X(2–4), 1978-79, 224-240.
10. Simon, Robert L. Fair Play. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004.