It’s a terrific story: a 37-year-old, 110th-ranked Joe Nobody comes back in the final round of the PGA Tournament to defeat Tiger Woods. What makes Y.E. Yang’s story even greater, however, is his backstory.  As the BBC reports here:

[Yang] only took up the sport after a knee injury in his teens ended his dreams of becoming a bodybuilder and he took a job collecting golf balls at a local driving range. Encouraged to hit a few balls by his brother at the Ora Country Club practice facility on his home island of Jeju, Yang found he had a natural aptitude for the game.

Kim Young-chan, executive director of the driving range, said: “After the guests left the range, he practiced late into the night. It is testament to how hard he worked to learn the game.”

He initially taught himself by watching other people and then imitating their style.

Sound familiar?

Also: mark the date. Like fellow South Korean Se Ri Pak’s U.S. Open victory in 1998, this will likely be the spark that creates a hotbed.

Of all the inspiring quotes about the life of the recently departed guitar inventor/virtuoso, this one is my favorite. It comes from a letter to Paul’s mother written by his piano teacher:  “Your boy, Lester, will never learn music.”

I love this video, because it shows a hidden link between these varied (and occasionally goofy) abilities. When we see somebody who’s superhumanly fast at something, we intuitively chalk it up to “natural speed” — the implication being that a regular person’s reflexes could never operate that fast.

But here –especially in slow-mo — we can better appreciate the real reason they’re so fast: efficiency. There are no wasted movements. They anticipate–each movement sets up the next. The cup-stacker, the stamper, the gun-reloader, even the pizza-maker share a stripped-down, restrained, targeted quality to their movements that is the true heart of speed — because they have systematically built skill circuits that are tight, restrained, and hugely efficient. (Well, except for that guy who removes his clothes in two seconds.  That is natural talent.)

Not that way. This way: Jose Bowen, a dean at Southern Methodist University, is on the leading edge of a promising movement to remove the nemesis of PowerPoint from college classrooms.  Students and teachers squawk a bit, but Bowen’s move makes absolutely perfect sense from a deep-practice POV. After all, when do you learn more, when you’re passively watching a slide or when you’re actively engaged in discussion, firing your circuitry?

Can happiness be created through the right kind of practice? Sounds surprising, but check out this article and judge for yourself. Author Daniel Goleman spends time with “The World’s Happiest Man” — a Tibetan lama named Mingyur Rinpoche — and finds a pattern behind his happiness that might seem familiar. Basically, Rinpoche deep practiced his happiness, through meditation, for thousands of hours. And while his happiness seems natural now, it certainly didn’t start out that way. As Goleman writes:

Mingyur Rinpoche was not born into wealth and comfort. He spent his earliest years in a remote Himalayan village lacking even the most basic amenities. Nor was he a lucky winner in the genetic lottery for moods. In his book he recounts being extremely anxious as a child in Nepal, having had what a Manhattan psychiatrist would likely diagnose as panic attacks, and how he cured himself of this chronic anxiety by making his fears the focus of his meditation. He has had to earn his good cheer.

Sound familiar?

Check out this choir from PS 22 in Staten Island — proof of the equation:  regular kids + master teacher + time = complete and utter brilliance. The thing I take away is how much Gregg Breinberg has ignited these kids to link their identity to singing, a moment that’s evident in their faces and body language.  This is not simply emotion — thanks to Mr. B, singing is who they are.

Here’s more, but be warned — they’re addictive.

Meet the Next Big Thing in classical music: 20-year-old Nobuyuiki Tsujii, winner of last week’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Tsujii, who the first blind winner in the contest’s 13-year history, embodies some basic truths of deep practice and ignition. From Barry Schlachter’s story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

[Tsujii’s parents] sensed their son’s tastes at age 2 when he reacted with a pronounced physical expression of joy to a symphony played on the home stereo, Itsuko Tsujii recalled. 

Ignition? Check.

While blind pianists often learn scores in Braille, [Tsujii] learns a piece by listening to others, either live or on a recording, memorizes the notes, then hones and re-hones his own take — muscular or delicate, depending on the music.

“In Japan, students generally are expected to bring all the ingredients and the teacher does the ‘cooking,’ ” said his mother, Itsuko Tsujii, who accompanied her son as assistant instructor and manager. “But with Nobu, his teachers expect him to do the cooking on his own and then would advise him on the final seasoning.”

Deep Practice? Check. 

The larger pattern is how a handicap can sometimes be turned into an advantage when it comes to constructing skill circuits. Like Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and entrepreneurs with dyslexia, Tsujii’s condition, combined with his intense desire, forced him to develop his own system for learning — a neural roadbuilding machine, so to speak. That machinery turns out to be far more effective than that of many sighted musicians, who learn in conventional ways.  The lesson echoes something Robert Lansdorp, the great tennis coach, once said: every coach’s ultimate goal should be to get the kid to teach themselves. 

ps — For a terrifically insightful portrait of how handicaps can fuel brilliance, check out In the Key of Genius: the Extraordinary Life of Derek Parvacini.

While in NYC last week — a slight cultural change from Alaska — I was pleased to spot David Byrne at a Chelsea restaurant. And since he’s one of my alltime favorite artists, I nobly resisted the urge to get an autograph and instead checked out Byrne’s blog. It’s delightfully random — including his musings on Costa Rican snorkeling to food reviews to reports from his concerts–and along the way, we get insight into how Byrne built his own considerable talents. Here’s one where he talks about his artistic ignition.  

So, was art good for me? It got me out of gym class, that’s for sure. Working on these detailed and obsessive pictures took a lot of time, and the high school art teacher kindly sent a slip excusing me from gym. I made a bunch more of these pictures, and at some point they were “exhibited” in a display case in the school hallway. Probably due to their resemblance to record covers, they were deemed OK and even hip by some of the students, and I was cool for a day — which was pretty great for someone as shy as I, who managed to make this, and later music, a way to be in the world. So in this sense, art was certainly “good” for me at the time.

It’s a classic story of the artist as a young person– the shy kid who finds fulfillment through detailed, obsessive, time-consuming art. What I take away is a better appreciation of the unsung hero, the kind art teacher who broke the rules so shy David could paint. Without that sharp-eyed person — completely anonymous, their name apparently lost to history — would David Byrne have become David Byrne?

 Here’s a provocative idea to save American tennis, entertainingly floated by Huan Hsu in today’s Slate: junk the expensive academies, the fancy training programs, and the sophisticated scouting systems, and replace them with what really produces champions: nutjob tennis parents. Huan writes:

Tennis consists of only a handful of basic strokes and strategies. As such, parents who wouldn’t dare try to teach, say, golf can read a book, watch a few videos, and give capable instruction. What separates the best players from their peers isn’t superior teaching. It’s maniacal devotion.

Comic talent: what’s it made of?  A new profile by Lynn Hirschberg gives us an X-ray of soon-to-be “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien at work, and the results are fascinating. 

Hirschberg on O’Brien’s comedy strategy:

O’Brien’s approach to comedy and television is analytical and exact. There’s a split in his psyche: he can be goofy, but he obsesses over the nuances of that goofiness. He’s constantly trying to puzzle out how best to be funny five nights a week for an audience of millions.

O’Brien on his background (ignition, anyone?):

“Everybody laughed at Carson – they all watched him. I started analyzing the show then. Since I was a teenager, I have been thinking about what’s funny and what’s not funny almost all the time. Not much in my life has changed since I was a kid…. My older brothers, Neal and Luke, slept in twin beds, and I was in a cot at the foot of their beds. I loved it. When you’re Irish Catholic, you learn to do comedy at the foot of your brothers’ beds. It’s all about trying to make your family laugh. And I employ the same muscle today. It’s just that now I make a living out of it.”

On his persistent, slow improvement after he landed his first hosting job at “Late Night” (which was rocky at first, to say the least):

 One key to O’Brien’s character is his quiet confidence that if he applies himself, he will eventually succeed. He’s not arrogant, but he’s willing to live and breathe the show. “…I’m addicted to the feeling of what it’s like to do a good show. There are 35 variables every night – what comedy do we have? What’s the audience like? Who are the guests? What time of year is it? What’s my mood? You need 15 cherries to line up to pay out the jackpot. And, every now and then, the stars align. And you keep chasing after that feeling.”

On his (deep) practice:

[O’Brien] walked over to an X that had been taped to the floor. When the show starts, that will be where he’ll stand when he emerges from the curtain to address the audience. “I come here at night, after everyone’s gone home, and I practice giving the monologue,” he said. “Every night. For hours. I just stand on the X and imagine the rest.”

Anybody read Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up? It’s virtually the same story–and more revealingly, the same underlying process.