Growing Up A Prodigy

Having never been a prodigy of any kind it is difficult for me to understand what it must be like growing up carrying those kinds of expectations. While I was busy learning how to walk and chew gum at the same time, a 14 year old named Nadia Comaneci was sticking a perfect ten at the Olympic games.

How does anyone do that?

The soccer prodigy Freddy Adu turned pro at 14, and at 17 years, 74 days Maria Sharapova won Wimbledon. When I was 17 years, 74 days old the only thing I was serving was pancakes at the local IHOP, and soccer wasn’t even a varsity sport.

If I recall, Tiger Woods played in the Nissan Los Angeles Open when he was 16. He didn’t win, but even if he had finished dead last, which he didn’t, he was still doing better than me.

As for the importance of an education to sports prodigies, Coby and LeBron ditched college all together and you can count on one hand the number of NBA stars that graduate from any where. Granted, there are ten thousand “would be prodigies” that dropped out of school and are now working on the shipping dock, and that is sad if you believe that basketball kept them out of medical school. However, taking your shot and not succeeding is not necessarily failing, and there is nothing dishonorable about working on the dock.

Are there prodigies that don’t fulfill their promise? Sure. Would they have been better served by taking it slow, or staying in school, or firing their agents, or their coaches, or having better parents? Who can really say. Life, even the lives of prodigies, is a mixture of nature and nurture and nothing is ever decided by talent alone.

Today, I’m a lot older than 14 and I don’t have a shoe contract, nor have I ever fired an agent, and I promise you that no one has ever offered me a zillion bucks to play a game. Which brings me to the point: Am better off because of that? Gosh, I hope not.

Is Nadia Comaneci better or worse off because someone pushed her to greatness? How about Freddy or Maria, or Coby, or LeBron, or even Tiger; are they better or worse off? Certainly they are better off financially, but being “better off” can mean a lot of different things, would you agree?

How about Michelle Wie, is she better or worse off? The truth is we don’t know because all we really know is Michelle Wie the television personality and golfer, and that’s not real life. Is she embracing the life of a celebrity golfer, or does she hate it? It’s hard to tell. Some people thrive on conflict, while others need more nurturing. I don’t know Michelle’s parents, or agent and I have no idea if she is being served well by them. I do know this, even if she never plays another game of golf in her life, she is probably financially set for life. Is she ruining her potential? I don’t know. If she had waited until she was older to turn pro would she have received the same contract from Nike and the same attention from the press? Would she be a better golfer? Who can say for sure?

Can you be a prodigy and not be driven? Did Tiger Woods wake up one morning and decide to be a golfer, or did his father drive him to the driving range every day from the time he was potty trained? Perhaps obsession comes with the territory.

Has Michelle made some mistakes? Certainly. However, unlike you and I, Michelle is making her teenage mistakes on national television and that’s really difficult; just ask Lindsey Lohan. I’m trying to imagine living my teenage years on national television and how ugly that would have been.

A couple of years ago I saw Michelle Wie on Sixty Minutes. It was the same day that she got her driver’s license, if I recall. When the interviewer asked her what she liked to do most, she answered like a teenage girl that had never picked up a golfclub in her life, “I like to hang out at the mall with my friends,” she said. And, in subsequent interviews, I heard her sound exactly her age, more times than not. As a matter of fact, the only time I ever heard her sound older was when she was answering golf questions.

Without question, Michelle Wie is a prodigy, not merely because she plays golf, or because she can hit the ball a mile, she a prodigy because she is so young. She’s the bearded lady in the circus and when she shaves, or in Michelle’s case becomes older, she will no longer be the story, so there is some logic to running as fast as you can, as long as you can.

I think Michelle is going to be fine. She is enrolling at Stanford this summer. Perhaps she’ll find a guy and never play golf again, or maybe she’ll find her game and reach the potential that we all hope to witness. Whatever happens, she seems like a nice young lady and I wish her nothing but the best.