Feature
ROGER COULD SHOW
THE WAY!
by Wg Cdr Arun Kumar Singh
(Retd), President, GCS&MAI
e was constantly pushed by a
doting father and was on TV
striking a golf ball with a Driver
at the age of 2. Clearly the
boy was gifted and his father
encouraged him to single mindedly
pursue success in golf as he believed
his son to be the ‘chosen one’. Tiger’s
reputation had grown by the time he
reached Stanford University and Earl
Woods went public with his prophecy
about his son going to have a bigger
infl uence than a Mandela, Gandhi or
Buddha!!
H
Roger Federer
Tiger Woods is decidedly the greatest player of this generation
and many believe him to be the greatest of all time. He also
demonstrated exceptional abilities as a child and could swing
a cut down golf club by imitating what he had seen at the age
of mere 10 months.
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GolfPlus Junior November-December 2019
Earl Woods believed that he had a role
to fulfi ll and went on to write a parenting
manual. The remarkable rise of Tiger
Woods and omnipresence of his father
alongside, captured the imagination of an
entire generation of parents. Many started
believing that they now had the secret
recipe of creating another champion in
their child. Malcolm Gladwell’s iteration
of ‘1000 hours of deliberate practice’
gave it some further impetus. An early
start, pursuit of excellence at a single
skill or overspecialization at an early
age became the ‘success mantra’. Most
parents see early signs of genius in their
kids and the special abilities of a baby
Tiger Woods were easy to overlook.
Teachers also reveled in the new found
enthusiasm and were quick to assure
the parents about genuine talent which
their wards possessed and the use of
technology, visuals etc. were enough to
convince them about the similarity in
golf swings with the masters.
Substantial research has been undertaken
on the science of learning at an early
age. Most of it points to the fact that
‘Generalists’ are far more likely to
succeed than ‘Specialists’ and even if
specialists were to get some advantage
at the beginning, it will get negated over
time and Generalists will not only catch
up but also overtake the early starters. It’s
also common to see other life adjustment