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A star is born? It's dangerous to be an athletic prodigy these days
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. Welcome to the world, little Jaden Gil Agassi. We're glad to have you with us, although there really was no need to be in such a rush. You arrived about a month before your mom and dad, Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi, expected you, but despite your premature birth on Friday, you and your mother were out of the hospital a day later. That means you must be a tough little guy, which is good. You'll have to be. With your parentage, you've obviously got a big-time genetic head start on any other potential tennis player. That new, $23 million mansion in northern California that your parents recently bought must have a trophy case the size of Sausalito to hold all the hardware from the zillions of tournaments they've won. We know that athletic talent isn't necessarily passed from generation to generation like a family pocket watch, but for the offspring of two of the greatest players in tennis history, there will be expectations just the same. From the moment we heard that your mom was pregnant with you, there was speculation on how great a player you might turn out to be. That means, Jaden, that you shouldn't be surprised if people are already expecting you to play with a racket instead of a rattle, or if they start scrutinizing your topspin lob before you get to preschool. We're no longer satisfied to lavish praise beyond all measure on current celebrity athletes. Now we want to identify our future heroes as soon as possible. Kids aren't just tutored in math and science anymore, but tennis and golf and soccer as well. Basketball recruiting newsletters that once told us about the top high school players in the country are now dipping into the grade schools. I know of one Web site that named a fifth grader in Buffalo as a potential star, thereby subjecting that little boy to pressure he's not ready for in order to deliver us information that we don't need. Pretty soon we'll be getting scouting reports straight from the delivery room. That's the sports culture you'll be dealing with should you decide to go into the family business, Jaden. We all know that tennis, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to devour its young, with too many kids joining the tour too early or even burning out by the time they're in junior high. A few, like Jennifer Capriati, overcome those problems, but many more do not. Our hope for you, Jaden, is that you don't encounter them in the first place. We suspect that you may have an advantage since, unlike many other young players, your parents won't be trying to live vicariously through you or depending on you to be their meal ticket. Your mom and dad know better than anyone the pitfalls that young players can stumble into, and we're betting you won't have to miss your friends' birthday parties to go hit with your instructor. Maybe you'll confound everyone and turn out to be no more gifted at tennis than your neighbor's kid down the street. Perhaps you'll be better at the piano, or with a chemistry set. Maybe you'll be more interested in the Internet than in coming to the net. That would not only be fine, it would probably be for the best. It's dangerous to be an athletic prodigy these days, even more so when you have a famous last name. We hope you turn out to be great at something, Jaden. In fact, we hope you turn out to be great at a lot of things, and maybe tennis will be one of them. Just don't let anybody make you think that it has to be. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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