A bet on the winner of the 2020 World Cup of Soccer should get you odds of at least 100:1, or a bet on the winner of 2020 Baseball World Series should get you odds of at least 250:1, I’m ready to place a bet of $100 on the winner of the 2020 Australian Open Tennis Tournament if someone will give me odds of 500:1. Obviously it will not be a player who is currently a member of the ATP tour; 12 years from now Roger Federer will be closing in on 40, Rafael Nadal will be 34, and all the young guns of today will have passed their primes and be over 30! My bet must be on a player who has yet to decide whether or not he will even want to play tennis, let alone being a champion, should he decide to play. Maybe 500:1 is not enough.

I’m a firm believer in genetics when it comes to sports. I also believe that being good at a particular sport for many individuals just happened to a choice made by circumstance rather than initial desire. What I mean by that is that most excellent athletes could be the best at any sport they chose to specialize in. For instance, I believe a great tennis player could also have been equally good at golf or cycling or cricket, if he or she had decided to put the same energy into learning that sport. So it follows that if Mum and Dad were exceptional athletes, Super Stars, or Olympic champions, then their offspring have a similar chance of being exceptional athletes. Just read the biographies of the top players in any sport, many of them have parents who excelled in one sport or another, but not necessarily the one in which the son or daughter pursued.

If my parents just happened to be two of the best tennis players that ever played the game of tennis, that between the two of them won 30 Grand Slams, 8 of those in Australia, 175 career singles titles, 2 individual Olympic Gold medals, and combined earnings approaching $55 million, then I would have to say that genetically the odds are in my favour that I will become a great tennis player in my own right. Now maybe Mum and Dad will decide that they don’t want either their son or daughter following in the family tradition, but knowing how competitive each of them was when they were active players, I would bet that seeing one of their kids standing on the podium as their country’s flag is raised, or seeing the hoisting of the Cup at the Australian Open would be such a magic moment of satisfaction that neither of them as parents would not find it overwhelming. I’m betting it happens in 2020.

Jaren Gil Agassi was born in 2001, just do the math and you’ll figure out that he’ll be 19 when the 2020 Aussie Open rolls around. The perfect age! Maybe his kid sister Jaz Elle will prove to be recipient of the family’s genetic heritage, if so I’ll add her to my exacta ticket!