I think it's a golfing quote that gets attributed to Gary Player or Arnold Palmer, but the message is clear. What's equally clear is whoever said it they were one of the best in the world.
Sometimes it seems to me that we believe some people are born able to hit a golf ball just so, or play a guitar just so, or sing just so... but the more I read the more I realise that the few who achieve the heights of being able to do this stuff just so, seemingly naturally, are the ones that, behind the scenes are putting in more work than anyone else.
One of my favourite fingerpickers - Pete Huttlinger - said, that like any guitar player who's any good, he spent several years practicing six to eight hours a day. Charlie Parker did the same on the sax. A couple of years of nine hours a day. We've all seen the movie. John Coltrane, Stan Getz, they did it, too. I remember reading that Michael Schumacher used to practice at the Ferrari test track with the sprinklers on, hundreds of laps after hundreds of laps, way more than anyone else, just so he was the best in the wet. David Beckham, in his youth was always the last kid to leave the park, practicing free kicks on his own even after dark.
This evening I watched an interview with Linda Ronstadt, one of my favourites, and she says the same thing about singing - you have to put in six to eight hours a day to learn how to sing. Like any musician, she says. Like a great cello player. Even after she made it, she says (sorry about all these "she says", I'm trying to save on speech marks), it took her ten years to be able to do with her voice what she wanted to do.
I've had way too many 10 000 hour arguments with folks over the years who insist that you've either got it or you haven't, and I have no desire to go there again. So far every "genius" I've ever read up on turns out to have done all this hard yardage. Sure, there may be some folks that are born with it. But it seems to me that time and time and time again I discover my own heroes and heroines weren't born with it but had to work eight nine, ten hours a day, every day, for years.
I do suspect that there is an element of having a bit of luck, or being in the position to have those eight hours available to you - I recall reading an interview with Courtney Pine in which he said he signed on just so he had all day every day to practice. I'm not sure who housed him, or who paid for Charlie Parker or John Coltrane's room and board, but I guess if you're that dedicated you'd find a way. Sweet talk a member of the opposite sex or plead with your parents or rob a bank...
In the modern era I think often it's parents that drive a child from a very young age to attend all the singing lessons and dance classes and photo-shoots and auditions from about three years of age that eventually sees them making it, seemingly overnight with all those skills appearing naturally just so.
But anyway, I can't help but wonder how much better I'd be at the guitar if I practiced eight hours a day. If I practiced singing ten hours a day maybe I could hit and hold some of those notes. If that's what it took for Linda Ronstadt then clearly my ten minutes a week isn't really going to cut it.
It's interesting to ponder on how dedicated we really are, isn't it? Do we really want this (whatever your personal "this" is)? Do we really want to put in those hours?
I can't help but think that it's that dedication rather than any natural taent that's the differentiator.
Just me musing over a bottle of red again...