What makes a winner?

I don't really follow golf, but I've always regarded it with the respect it deserves as a test of skill, athletic ability, and composure.  While browsing Face Book this morning this quote from Jack Nicklaus regarding this past weekend's Masters tournament caught my attention:

I’ve watched Danny Willett play on television a few times and when I’ve seen him swing the golf club, I have thought, “Well, this young man looks like he’s a pretty darn good player.” He had moved himself up to 12th in the world, so he’s obviously done something right and was playing very good golf coming into Augusta. What impressed me so much is that when he realized he was in a position to win, he finished it—and that’s the mark of a champion: To finish a good round; give yourself an opportunity to win; and when the other fellow doesn’t finish, you’ve got to be there. Danny Willett was and kudos to him.

At the world class level it is very, very rare to see an athlete so exceptionally dominant that he or she wins every competition in a rout.  More often, winning is a matter of putting yourself in a position to capitalize when other competitors falter, and then grabbing that opportunity.  We've seen it in the Super Bowl, the Masters, the Indianapolis 500, Wimbledon, and just about any other high-profile sporting event you can name.  And we see it with regularity in canoe and kayak racing.  Most of time there's not one dominant athlete, but a group of top athletes, in any given paddling discipline; and the one who wins a world or Olympic title is the one who had the most things fall into place that year or that month or that day.