we should not overlook the fact that this action is a consequence of at least 10,000 or
more hours of practice in the sport in question. Similar sentiments were expressed by the
former golf champion Gary Player who quipped paradoxically, “you must work very hard
to become a natural golfer!” (cited in MacRury, 1997, p. 95). Of course, this remark is
not intended to dismiss the influence of innate skills in sport. Nonetheless, it challenges
us to understand the complex interplay that occurs between talent, motivation, practice
habits, quality of coaching and family support (see Durand-Bush and Salmela, 2002) in
shaping athletic expertise. Controversially, as we shall see later in this chapter, some
researchers (e.g., Ericsson, 2001a, 2001b) have gone so far as to proclaim that practice is
the foremost cause of expert performance in any field.
Against this background of claims and controversies, the present chapter investigates
the nature and determinants of athletic expertise. Therefore, it will address a number of
intriguing questions. For example, what makes someone an expert in a given field? Is
athletic expertise simply a matter of being endowed with the right genetic “hardware”
(e.g., visual acuity skills above the average) or do “software” characteristics such as
practice habits and psychological skills play an important role? If sporting excellence lies
partly in the mind, then how do the knowledge and skills of expert athletes differ from
those of less successful counterparts? What stages of learning and development do novice
athletes pass through on their journey to expertise? Finally, can research on expertise
illuminate any significant principles that might help us to understand how the mind
works?
In order to answer these questions, the chapter is organised as follows. To begin with,
I shall explain what “expertise” means and indicate why it has become such an important
topic in psychology. The second section will address the general question of whether
athletic success is determined more by hardware or by software characteristics of sport
performers. In the third part of the chapter, I shall outline and evaluate research methods
and findings on expert-novice differences in the domain of sport. Interestingly, one of the
issues that we shall raise in this section is the degree to which athletic expertise transfers
effectively from one domain to another within a given sport. Specifically, do former top-
class football players make expert managers? The fourth section will explore the
development of expertise in sport performers. Included in this section is an explanation
and critique of Ericsson’s (1996,2001b) theory that expertise is due mainly to a
phenomenon called “deliberate practice”. In the fifth part of the chapter, I shall examine
the significance of, and some problems and new directions in, research on expertise in
athletes. Finally, some suggestions will be provided for possible research projects in this
field.
The nature and study of expertise in sport“Expertise”, or the growth of specialist knowledge and skills through experience, is
currently a hot topic in cognitive science (Lehmann and Ericsson, 2002) as well as in
sport psychology (Starkes and Ericsson, 2003; Starkes, Helsen and Jack, 2001). Before
we consider the reasons for its popularity among researchers in these disciplines,
however, we need to explain precisely what the term expert actually means.
What lies beneath the surface? Investigating expertise in sport 153