Editor’s note: This content is a supplement to Unlocking the Bowling Talent Code – Part 2.
When Evonne Goolagong Cawley turned 10, she decided she was going to win Wimbledon. “I read this story about this lady who came along to see this young girl play tennis and saw that she had a lot of talent and started to help out and trained with her very hard and then took her to Wimbledon where she eventually won.” From this story, Goolagong Cawley garnered the belief that she too could train very hard with her coach Vic Edwards and go on to win Wimbledon, which she did at age 19.
Walter Lindrum, the billiards world champion, was driven to excel by his need to match or surpass his older brother to gain the respect of his father, who originally hadn’t wanted his youngest son to play billiards. This desire to better his Australian Champion brother and win his father’s adulation drove Lindrum to practice 12 hours a day from a very young age, and to then play and practice billiards daily for the rest of his life.
When Don Bradman was 12, his father took him to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) to watch the fifth Ashes test match between Australia and England. On that day, Bradman formed an ambition. “I shall never be satisfied”, he told his father, “until I play on this ground.” This aspiration helped motivate the pre-teen Bradman to continue to practice obsessively with his cricket stump and golf ball until he did indeed play at the SCG, where as a 20 year old he scored 340 not out, which was then a first-class record. A year later, he set a world record of 452 not out at the same ground.
