Tennis Champions: Are They Born? Or Made?

John Newcombe, former Australian Davis Cup captain and former world tennis No 1 stated that the top Australian players of the era believed that it was their fate to become tennis winners.

Boris Becker said that two weeks before achieving his first Wimbledon title (at 1985 when seventeen years old)he felt as though it had been predetermined.

As a seventeen year old, Ivan Lendl, who held the No 1 spot longer was convinced that he would turn himself to the best player on earth. He would tell you.

When requested by the press about his chances of winning his first US Open title (in 1975), Jimmy Connors’ response was”There are 127 losers in the draw — and me!”
Jimmy won.

What these greats had in common was an unshakeable certainty that they would win. It’s a trait that is shared with all leading sports people.

But a question that has fascinated me is: Are such winners created, or are they made?

Why were Newccombe, Lendl, Becker and Connors made to rule the tennis world? Due to the choices that they made or did they turn into winners? As signaled by Becker and Newcombe was their achievement predetermined? Or was it a consequence of a single-minded dedication to producing the very finest, as signaled by Lendl and Connors?

Are champions a product of nature? Or nurture?

For a champion at any game or tennis requires very particular attributes. These attributes or qualities can be broken into two categories — the mental and both the bodily. It’s my contention that attributes are predominantly a matter of luck. They’re determined.

For instance, some individuals are born with a human construction conducive others to power to rate, etc. In arrival, a very large proportion of the people are excluded, in this way, from winning a gold medal as a weightlifter or a sprinter.

It’s the very same with tennis. The physical features that are required to become a champion player are such things as leg-speed, quick reflexes, and coordination. Without question, these attributes can be developed to their fullest capacity with training procedures that were effective and hard labour.

But most individuals are far from getting the best tennis player on the planet, however long they spend trying to reach their level of possible.

Does this mean, then, that winners are born? Newcombe, Becker, Lendl and Connors so superior to everyone else who became the finest was a mere gimmick?

Surely not. All four were talented physically, but in my view, there were players of the eras who were more talented than they had been.

What separated them out of everyone else were their own psychological attributes: their will to win, their determination, their perseverance, their capacity to remain calm under presuuretheir capacity to bounce back from disappointments, and the impression that they deserved to win — all attributes that not one of us is born with, but that each of us has the ability to develop. The option is whether we want to or not.

It is that, given the mandatory or necessary attributes as a starting point, all winners are not just made — they are self explanatory.