Talent code

by Daniel Coyle

Every journey begins with questions, and here are three: How does a penniless Russian tennis club with one indoor court create more top-twenty women players than the entire United States? How does a humble storefront music school in Dallas, Texas, produce Jessica Simpson, Demi Lovato, and a succession of pop music phenoms? How does a poor, scantily educated British family in a remote village turn out three world-class writers? Talent hotbeds are mysterious places, and the most mysterious thing about them is that they bloom without warning. The rst baseball players from the tiny island of the Dominican Republic arrived in the major leagues in the 1950s; they now account for one in nine big-league players. The rst South Korean woman golfer won a Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tournament in 1998; now there are forty-ve on the LPGA Tour, including eight of the top twenty money winners. In 1991 there was only one Chinese entry in the Van Cliburn piano competition; the most recent competition featured eight, a proportional leap re ected in top symphony orchestras around the world.