By age 6 Federer himself states, he was playing tennis "all he time." He says, "I could never really get enough. I played with my parents, friends and whoever wanted to play with me at the tennis club. If there was no one to play with I would spend hours smacking tennis balls against the tennis wall." By age 9 he's getting private lessons. And in the research article you reference they use Federer as an example of not specializing early. I supposed practicing "all the time" at age 6 is not early enough for some to think that specialization does not matter. But, 6 seems pretty early to me. The article you cited also used Gretzky. Yet, Gretzky was playing hockey at two and a half years old. I supposed he could have started at 6 months old but 2 and half seems pretty early to start learning the game. It also cites Michael Phelps. He started when he was 7 and had a national record by 10 and was training with Bob Bowman by age 10. This all seems pretty early to me.
By age 6 Federer himself states, he was playing tennis "all he time." He says, "I could never really get enough. I played with my parents, friends and whoever wanted to play with me at the tennis club. If there was no one to play with I would spend hours smacking tennis balls against the tennis wall." By age 9 he's getting private lessons. And in the research article you reference they use Federer as an example of not specializing early. I supposed practicing "all the time" at age 6 is not early enough for some to think that specialization does not matter. But, 6 seems pretty early to me. The article you cited also used Gretzky. Yet, Gretzky was playing hockey at two and a half years old. I supposed he could have started at 6 months old but 2 and half seems pretty early to start learning the game. It also cites Michael Phelps. He started when he was 7 and had a national record by 10 and was training with Bob Bowman by age 10. This all seems pretty early to me.