This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Susanne Bard.This July, just one year after turning pro, 15-year-old Coco Gauff beat tennis superstar Venus Williams in the first round at Wimbledon.She went on to win two more rounds against highly ranked players during the tournament.Similarly, in 2009 17-year-old Melanie Oudin beat a series of top-ranked opponents, making it to the fifth round of the U.S. Open.How did these newcomers do so well?One factor―in addition to stellar play―could have been their meteoric rise in status both prior to and during the tournament.Opponents seeing the newbies' names climb in the rankings might have been somewhat psyched out.It's a phenomenon that Duke University researcher Hemant Kakkar calls "status momentum":"If that person is gaining momentum, you tend to feel more threatened or intimidated by their momentum.And as a result, your performance is impaired."Kakkar and his colleagues analyzed more than 100,000 matchups between tennis pros and millions of amateur chess games.They found that players fared worse when facing opponents who were rising in rank.And it's not just that the rise in rank reflected higher skills."Our research shows that you will be more threatened by someone who has improved their ranking from 10 to eight to four than who was always at four.Even though the two players have objectively the same rank, you feel more threatened by the one who has risen in rank."