“Inches make champions.”
~Football coach Vince Lombardi
In his 2024 Dartmouth University commencement address, tennis superstar Roger Federer illustrated how great achievements need not require great innate superiority. By developing just the slightest edge over one’s competitors, gratifying results may ensue. After acknowledging that he won nearly 80 percent of his 1526 tennis matches, he asked his audience, “What percentage of the POINTS do you think I won in those matches?” His answer: “Only 54%.”
Natural talent matters. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you it doesn’t,” reflected Federer. But, he added, “it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit.” In another commencement address, NFL quarterback Tom Brady offered kindred advice: “If you want to be great at something, you’re going to have to put all your commitment and effort and discipline into doing just that.”
That recipe—natural talent x disciplined grit --> slight advantage --> great achievement—is confirmed in research on human achievements.
Let’s deconstruct the evidence. First, native talent forms the raw material beneath great achievements. Superstars (from Mozart and Einstein to Caitlin Clark) come gifted with exceptional potential. Children who score astronomically high on IQ or SAT tests (recall the Terman geniuses and the Johns Hopkins Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth) later become greatly overrepresented among inventors, scientists, and high earners (Mark Zuckerberg and Lady Gaga among them). In an era when grade inflation has diminished the predictive power of high school grades, some elite universities are, therefore, again using aptitude scores to assist their talent identification.
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Yet far more is needed. For cooking exceptional achievement, the recipe, as Federer appreciates, is talent times tenacity.
Although Thomas Edison’s assertion that “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” overstates the point, willpower has outperformed intelligence scores in predicting school attendance, performance, and graduation honors. “Discipline outdoes talent,” concluded researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman. With exceptional talent but ordinary motivation, most of the Terman whiz kids, though living happy lives, did not attain eminence or become professionals.
In sports and music, tenacity refines natural talent. By their early twenties, top violinists have fiddled double the practice hours of the average violin teacher. Much the same is true for top-flight ballet dancers, chess masters, and, as Federer reminds us, tennis players. Superstar attainments arise when exceptional natural talent is married to extraordinary perseverance.
Federer illustrates that if one has enough talent x tenacity to gain even a small edge, the result may accumulate to something special. (Mathematically, tennis players who win 54 percent of points can be expected to exceed Federer’s result, wining near 91 percent of matches.) Life experience offers many examples of small advantages feeding great accomplishment:
- Contemplate the mathematics of monthly compounding. Twenty-year-old Tom invests a $10,000 inheritance at 8 percent interest. When he retires at age 70, he can withdraw $538,781. Meanwhile, Tom’s clever twin sister Angela examines the options and invests her $10,000 at a smidgen greater rate—9 percent—and will withdraw much more: $885,182.
- In evolution, a trait that gives only a slight survival advantage can, over many generations, lead to a species’ dominance.
- An infinitesimal starting difference between two weather systems can produce, days later, two utterly different outcomes (known familiarly as “the butterfly effect”).
- C. S. Lewis glimpsed the phenomenon in everyday life: “Little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.”
- In the 2024 U.S. Open golf tournament, Bryan DeChambeau’s 274 strokes bested Rory McIlroy by a single stroke, giving DeChambeau a $4.3 million prize, nearly double McIlroy’s $2.32 million runner-up prize.
And if little advantages matter, then tenacity can push the envelope:
- A gritty student who studies a difficult subject an extra 20 minutes a day will likely excel beyond an equally capable classmate—increasing future opportunities at better schools and jobs.
- Effortfully attracting one new customer a week can, over time, create a thriving business.
- If each day you set aside the amount of a $4 latte for stock market investing, in 30 years (if the S&P 500’s last 30-year return rate repeats) you’ll have about $248,000.
Federer’s experience highlights how mighty oaks grow from little acorns—small advantages bred by tenacity enables talent to bloom. By harnessing the synergy between talent and tenacity, Federer achieved sustained excellence while winning just 54 percent of his points.
We, too, by developing our natural talents with relentless perseverance, can similarly gain a slight edge that, over time, can compound to significant accomplishments. From sports to academia to finance, persistent gritty effort sets exceptional achievers apart from their equally talented compatriots.
(David Myers, a Hope College social psychologist, authors psychology textbooks and trade books, including his recent essay collection, How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind.)
