What About Mozart and Tiger Woods? 

Mozart wrote music at age 5, gave public performances at age 8, and composed some of the world’s most beautiful symphonies before his death at age 35. A close look at his background reveals:

* His father, Leopold, was an expert music teacher who published a violin textbook the year Mozart was born.

* Leopold systematically instructed Mozart from at least age 3 (probably sooner).

* Mozart’s first four piano concertos, composed at age 11, contained no original music. He cobbled them together from other composers’ works. He composed his first original masterpiece, the Piano Concerto No. 9, at age 21. That’s a remarkable achievement, but by then he’d gone through 18 years of intense, expert training.

As Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, says, “Ambitious parents who are currently playing the ‘Baby Mozart’ video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard.”

Then there’s Tiger Woods, who shot a 48 over nine holes at age 3, appeared in Golf Digest at age 5, broke 80 at age 8, and won six consecutive Junior World Golf Championships. The list goes on. At age 20, he dropped out of Stanford to turn pro, since his peers were no longer competition.

His early life parallels Mozart’s in many ways:

* Tiger’s father, Earl, was a teacher. (He became obsessed with golf in this 40s.)

* Earl gave Tiger his first metal club, a putter, at age 7 months. And he put a highchair in the garage so Tiger could watch him hit balls into a net. “It was like a movie being run over and over and over for his view,” Earl wrote.

* Earl started taking Tiger to the golf course before age 2, where they played and practiced regularly.

Yet when questioned about Tiger’s amazing career, both father and son give the same answer: hard work.