When I was very young, I was sure I was going to be a great hockey player -- if only the professional leagues allowed players to wear used white roller skates their Aunt Melissa gave them. I was that good. A few years later, it was baseball. And then adulthood came and I've become a professional observer.

If only I had been groomed properly. The New York Times Magazine explores how super athletes are groomed from a very young age. A Russian tennis camp, for instance, drills technique and repetition as a way to bolster hand-eye coordination and also to more properly "hard wire" the brain cell coating -- myelin -- that speed up signals. Do something enough times, and the coating acts less like dial up and more like a T1 cable, according to the theory.

Tiger Woods? Super fast connections. Mike Adamick? Not so much. But you knew that already. Still, there's hope for the next generation -- if I'm willing to set my young daughter on the links or a ballfield and force her to endlessly perfect her technique, which will speed up those brain connections and, one day, earn her a spot in the pros.

The article says it takes 10 years to reach world class levels. I just hope she likes golf. Or hockey. Maybe baseball. I haven't decided for her yet.