What is Talent?

Sorry, but talented people are better than you. Not better people, but better built; stronger, faster, quicker with better eyesight, body sense (proprioception), hand-eye coordination, muscle memory, temperament, balance, flexibility, and situational awareness. That does NOT mean that they are all better tennis players than you are. It DOES say that given the same obtainable qualities; motivation, training, confidence, experience, and understanding of the game as you, they will possess insurmountable advantages you will never be able to overcome. Their nascent talent also gives them advantages in perfecting these "obtainable" qualities. They play better from an early age, so they get the best games and playing opportunities in school, at the club and in the community, so they have superior experience. They also catch a coach's eye at an early age, so they get better and more enthusiastic training. After all, it is a lot easier to coach someone who doesn't need to be taught how to throw a ball, run, walk, and breathe. They are always better than their peers, which feeds their egos and thereby provides essential and powerful motivation to play, practice and improve. They usually win at their level, so they are naturally confident. The one area where they tend to be weak is understanding. They don't need to understand how or why they do things since they do them so naturally, it is a waste of time for them to dwell on the science of it all. Often their sense of what they are doing is entirely wrong, but it doesn't seem to prevent them from figuring out on their own how to do it very successfully. Truth be told I would take talent over understanding any old day (as I am sure you would), but we have not been offered that choice. We have to work with what we have got, and the one advantage we differently-talented individuals have over the talented is our lack of talent. Our talentlessness leaves us with no choice but to dissect and study our games in the hope that ultimately the sheer weight of our pathetic nerdiness will overbalance their raw athleticism.