I dropped everything and went to a tennis academy for high school when I realized I was lucky enough to live have the family to support me financially, and where I lived wasn't a great place to achieve whatever potential I had.<p>After going to the academy for two years and getting consistently better, I started hearing more and more from people about my "potential", although I wasn't one of the "stars" who would go on to make great money playing professional tennis.<p>I had finished high school that year, and instead of going to college I decided to take a year off and continue playing international tournaments on the junior circuit. I had done decent and was in the top 1000 worldwide, but wanted to really see how I could do. I had the rest of the year in eligibility (it was June when I graduated, and you can play until the year you turned 19, which started the next January), so I packed my bags and played something like 25 tournaments that fall in a number of different countries.<p>I did poorly. I made it inside the top 650 or so, far from my goal or realizing any potential I thought I had. It seemed that I just didn't have quite the talent necessary to make it, nor do anything noteworthy with my tennis.<p>This was disheartening, but I had six more months before I would have to go off to college while keeping full eligibility, so it seemed like my best bet was to practice- with a new perspective that I didn't quite have years earlier.<p>So this time I got a private coach along with the normal academy practices. Every afternoon when everyone else was in school, we'd keep working. I figured that even though I wasn't a natural talent like some of those guys, a few hours' edge on them every day would help my case. My coach was great, super intense and helped push me when I was tired. I hit my physical capacity a few times and had to take a day or afternoon off every once in a while, but the fact that I was doing more than those supposedly untouchable <i>natural talents</i> was ACTUALLY working. I was noticeably better, a "friggin' moose on the court" as my coach would say, and I started really competing with and even beating some of the guys ranked in the top 100.<p>I think too few people really work very, very hard, which is what's required to make up for natural talent. This causes the huge amount of naysayers, who never see anyone with little talent exceed expectation. Because of that, too few of the untalented work hard. It's a vicious cycle.