While Wallace was a very fine player, he never qualified for a major tournament. He wonders what makes a great tennis player? I think his answer is true for greatness of any sport and, perhaps, any form of superior performance.
It is not an accident that great athletes are often called “naturals,” because they can, in performance, be totally present: they can proceed on instinct and muscle-memory and autonomic will such that agent and action are one…They can withstand forces of distraction that would break a mind prone to self-conscious fear in two.
The real secret behind top athletes’ genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself. The real many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player’s mind…might well be: nothing at all.
I am reminded of how Woody Allen defined greatness during an interview at The New Yorker Festival in 2000. He said:
… you do what you do, you do what you do best, and if others like it or think it's great, then that's fine. And if they don't, that's fine too. But you always have to do what you like to do and what you do naturally. Talent is a gift, not something you can try to attain. You can work at perfecting it, but first it has to be there.
Malcolm Gladwell’s view of greatness (or success as he calls it) is a little more complicated. In Outliers: The Story of Success, he says there are five factors determining outstanding success: talent, hard work, opportunity, timing and luck..
Yes, you need to have a natural talent and practice, practice, practice. But you also need a fair amount of luck and be given the opportunity to express yourself, however you can do that.
Timing also plays a role, say in tennis, the opponents you play at that time, the stage of your development and something as simple as the time of the day, the light on the court, and how many hours you slept the night before.
Gladwell’s conception goes well beyond the simplicity of Woody’s and Wallace’s view. It recognizes the multiple factors that govern any behavior and the unpredictable way they combine in any individual. For this reason, it seems to me the most reasonable current account of “greatness” in any field.
