The loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I've never really understood, at an emotional level, why pro sports exist. So after a while of conversation, during which he mentioned a few times how difficult life was for them, I finally felt like I could ask:
"If it's like you've described, why do it at all?"
He stared into space for a good few seconds, then responded:
"Glory."
I've wondered a few times since then whether the girl he was coaching would think that glory was enough; she had a look that, following the article, I'd describe as glassy-eyed loneliness. But maybe in a few years, she'll be the coach for someone in the next generation. For myself... I still don't really get it.
Most of these people "burn" their youth chasing the dream and don't get a non-sport education/experience. A career of a trainer is still likely more attractive than a menial unqualified job.
> Athletes are no fools
Those bankruptcy statistics might be biased given how poorly paid athletes are, thus tgey might be a consequence of their past and not their present.
They aren't fools, they pursue their dreams. Less foolish than some of us.
You're generalizing quite a bit here. The other common story for those in the team sports I've heard is that a ton of them have poor financial education and got fleeced by money managers. Combo that with poor job prospects and injuries from the sport itself that you've to pay to treat...
For sure, I'm someone like that. But I started at 20 to get into my field. My first job was laughably badly paid, but I got a foot in the door.
These athletes usually end their career at around 35. An age where you already have a family or plan to get it soon, meaning you have financial obligations, and it's not easy to completely switch the career tracks. Many will manage to do it, but many will rather choose the safe way of staying in the sport, where they already have a resume, knowledge, customer base.
> given how poorly paid athletes are
I Googled for minimum contracts in those four leagues:
NBA: 1.1m USD NFL: 660k USD NHL: 750k USD MLB: 60k USD
MLB is shockingly low, but it might be explained by the farm leagues. (I don't know more details.) I doubt anyone who sees regular play in the MLB is making so little.
The rest are poorly paid.
I think people might need to have a plan b, but honestly I don't know very many people who do. People are good at doing what defines them, not hedging.
Most companies nowadays offer zero on the job training. You need 5 years of experience for your internship. You are supposed to make impact now.
Maybe somoene can score some sales based on looks, but come on.
You need to register your sales in SAP now, it's your problem nobody told you how (although with sales they still will, since it is a profit center).
So its like a slow-burning pyramid scheme powered by youthful optimism?
Even in the case of very young players that are paying to play, it’s the parents money, so not exactly “youthful optimism” that powers it.
In contrast pro sports are a scalable career, where incomes can scale separately from effort, similar to movie stars, authors and musicians. The relationship is an exponential with the very best earning the lion share of the income of the entire industry, earning literally millions of times more than those at the bottom of the industry.
Given a certain amount of effort invested in your career so far, if you know you're middle of the road of a scalable career, and it's becoming less and less likely that you'll hit the top 1 percentile, then I would think that the likelihood that you should perhaps look to change career should be much higher than if you were middle of the road in a non scalable career.
[1] https://casnocha.com/2009/03/scalable-vs-non-scalable-career...
The top artists like Taylor Swift have scalable careers mostly because they operate like a corporation.
> He stared into space for a good few seconds, then responded:
"Glory."
The coach was a Klingon?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/02...
I know a family with a pre-teen son investing a huge amount of time in another individual sport. 4-5 hours every weeknight, putting pressure on schooling and on the family by limiting schedules and recreation. They all give a certain look when they talk about it, knowing that there is a cost to creating (potentially) an elite athlete. At least the kid himself doesn't look glass-eyed and lonely, but I do wonder how that life would compare in hindsight to regular family, time for socialising, regular holidays, etc. This is not really sport with NBA money at the end.
But the number of parents who take this so seriously would surprise anyone not part of this culture.
The travelling, the hotel rooms, the large number of tournaments played every week -- all these things start early (7-8 years old). School? Forget about it. They're superficially home-schooled. Tennis is all they do, and if they're lucky (at least by the standards of the article), they don't get good enough to be a low-level "pro" and get a chance to go to school for a proper education and get a regular job that pays well.
If they're unlucky, they get a D1 school, on a full-ride scholarship, and then waste a few years of their lives continuuing to damage their bodies in pursuit of "making it" as a pro tennis player.
It’s hard not to let my imagination run wild about him walking out center court at Wimbledon (okay fine I’d take the French Open too), with me in the stands cheering him on.
But then I see what it takes to even get to a D1 level (private coaching, academies where he’s fodder for the golden goose, et al) let alone making it to The Show and I would never in a million years want to subject my child to that kind of torture.
I’ve come to accept it’s most likely he might play in high school and him and I can enjoy playing together as a fun bonding activity.
Serena said in that HBO documentary about her that she’d never put her kids into the Tennis machine and that’s about as much validation as I’ll ever need.
Any child activity that resembles a job if you squint is going too far. I don't care if we never see another Mozart, Federer or Michael Jackson. It's abuse to squeeze a child into such a narrow life. It produces broken adults.
Let kids be kids.
I did not learn any discipline because everything was scheduled for me. I really didn't like most of my experience.
Two positives:
1. I kept a lot my agility, muscle, and flexibility. Even after ceasing all physical activity for over 10 years.
2. Sharpened the connection between my mind and body. I'm really good at learning new physical skills that require fine motor control.
Though I'm sure many, many other activities can provide these benefits as well.
If I could go back, I would spend less time in those tennis camps, less time playing WoW, and more time in shop class, and hanging with the robotics people.
I say this because I got washed out during a critical development phase (I was 10 years old) due to some poorly timed family crises and an abusive teacher. I think I’ve done okay for myself and still play as a hobby but the what-ifs do enter my daydreams from time to time…
A serious training regime in any enjoyable skill between 5 and 20 can be a very rewarding thing once you reach adulthood. If you're not an elite musician, you can still be in a very popular local band or ensemble and play festivals and gatherings. If you're a varsity high school athlete you can play at a high level in clubs through adulthood and maybe teach on the side.
I think Talented children should be shown the path, and if they have the natural drive and competitiveness then you can meet them at that level and encourage it.
The mandolin player in my band is a talented mandolinist, singer, pianist, and guitarist. He told me once that his parents made him practice 3 hours of classical piano every day for many years and he absolutely hated it. I asked him if he wished he hadn't been made to do that, and he said no, he wouldn't voluntarily give up the musical advantages that training conferred on him. He's perfectly happy as a 21 year old CS student that plays in a band.
As a former us division III track athlete I am well aware of the many many tiers of pure athletic ability that exists.
#200 in the world at any sport has astounding superhuman abilities. Pros are born with 80-95%of the raw ability and the rest is training.
There is a 99.9999% chance or worse your Olympian in training won't make it. If they do, 99% of them will last a year or two at most.
10000 hours only gets you to competence.
Michael Jordan famously was cut from his high school bball team, but he had a 40 inch vertical even back then.
The difficulty with this statement is trying to get it to override the glaring anecdotal counterexample staring every parent-child pair in the face.
You have one dude who had no cultivated knowledge of the sport and took a couple of tennis lessons from "Old Whiskey" then wrote a 85 page plan and then will-powered the shit out of getting his physically non-alike non-identical twin daughters to be pro tennis athletes.
The idea that the guy who had a tennis idea just happened to come by two daughters who were already possesing 85-90% god given talent for the sport he just happened to specifically pick is hard for a human to wrap their mind around I think.
Don't get be wrong, it could still be true. But if it's true, some should still test it.
1) You've got it backward. If that hadn't been true, you'd never have heard about them.
You could drop the Williams sisters in practically ANY power sport given their size and build (Venus is REALLY BIG for a woman--she's 6' 1" and could likely play in the WNBA--Serena isn't exactly tiny--she's 5' 9"--that puts them at 3 and 2 standard deviations out, repectively) and they would dominate very quickly.
If the Williams sisters played basketball or soccer, for example, they'd be a hugely dominant force there, instead.
2) Training did a big shift right about the 1990s when people like the Williams sisters were coming up--especially for female training.
Navratilova was really the first female tennis player to adopt more scientific power training and reap the benefits. The players in the next generation (which includes the Williams sisters) that were steeped in that idea and put it into practice did very well in a LOT of different sports. They also easily blew through competitors who didn't do that--and at that point in the 1990s there were still a lot who didn't.
The Williams dad basically coached Venus and Serena. Think about it, he's not even a professional coach. Think about all the thousands of privileged tennis players that get unlimited professional coaching, facilities, Boletteri academy, etc.
I will grant you that tennis is a sport where overwhelming athleticism is not the primary attribute. But right after hand-eye coordination comes athleticism, and after that is top-tier endurance.
There is no shortage of athletes in high-revenue sports that will literally run through walls (see: rugby, american football) to succeed. And the vast majority of them don't. Look at Division I college sports: full of totally dedicated elite athletes receiving top level coaching. How many of them move onto the lower tiers of pro tennis?
Don't be fooled by the lottery winners / survivor bias of the top players. Yes they worked hard to get where they were. Yes they may work harder or smarter than some of their near-peers with equally flaggergasting natural talents. Yes it fits into a popular American narrative of hard work == success.
But look at Nick Krygios. I don't follow the guy's training, but it's pretty clear that he is as apathetic a top player as there is. Every tennis observer knows he has the physical gifts of an all-time great, almost naturally given.
Donovan Bailey was a Canadian sprinter that won the 100m in the Olympics in the 90s (no, not the steroid guy Ben Johnson). He was basically not training and goofing off a year before the Olympics and someone finally got through to him to actually train for it and got him focused, and boom a year later he was Olympic champ in the most selective, widely contested, pure athletic event in existence.
A lot of my frustration with the youth coaching sports pipeline is that they tell the parents to focus on one sport to exclusion. There is a racket where the high school teams will only have players coached by the coach in the offseason, "paid his dues".
So kids don't get a wide variety of sports exposure and don't have fun. Which is dumb. Sure there are these youth sports coach vampires making a buck off of the hopes and dreams of the parents, but it comes down to the idiot parents not realizing how things really work.
I don't think it's helpful to assert true the point that's trying to proven. The point is Richard Williams made a decision before it could possible be known that both daughters just happened to be pure phenomenal athletes at that young an age for that specific sport. There is no evidence that this is not s case of nuture overcoming nature since the absence of similar successes could just as easily be chalked up to shitty coaching of what were incredibly talented youths who were more pure athletes than either of the Willams sisters instead of an indictment of the lack of god given talent those other failed youths originally possessed.
>But look at Nick Krygios. I don't follow the guy's training, but it's pretty clear that he is as apathetic a top player as there is.
The point of contention is not whether naturally talented athletes can become pro with minimal effort, which I think hardly anyone would disagree with in theory. The contested point is whether the parent is condemning their children to failure if they do not rack up successes at a very young age.
There was a piece a while back ago attributing the success of notable famous people like Einstein to the presence of all consuming private tutors, where the tutor in question was either a very close family friend, a family member, or a relative. These people just didn't quit when other tutors with less skin in the game would. How do we know 50% natural talent is not enough and the rest cannot be overcome by nuture, and that it has to be 90% natural talent from the get go?
I agree that regardless of success such a life might be subpar. But whether a parent should subject their kid to such a life is a related but a separate issue to the question of their potential success.
In my country we have olympic medalists in kayaking, rowing etc. and they are nowhere close to making any money out of it.
So, he barely won any money from the actual sport itself, but his job prospects after he retired were very good, even for someone who was in his mid-thirties and almost no real work experience.
That's the reason that in many countries the zoom Olympic athletes work for the state (soldier, police, ...) where training and representing the country at competitions are part of the Job and once the aports career is over ideally they get a job as clerk or such in the administration
These sports in general provide value in the sense that many people find them worth paying for. That's the definition of value.
Now, it's true that they're not generally excited to see the #503rd ranked player in the world play the #489th ranked player. But, the top 50 players in the world were once ranked at the bottom. They played their way up.
In other words, how would you know who are the best players in the world unless you have a large pool of professional players?
Like many, I have a lot of issues with the way tennis rankings are calculated and the way prize money is distributed. You need those lower ranked players and therefore they should be paid more.
But make no mistake D1 and Pro-Circuit players are, at the end of the day, still very good.
That is improving at something that is completely useless still. It is not even more interesting to watch than, say, 20 years ago. That progress does not help anyone.
It is not the same with sport. You being 0.05s faster swimmer does not make swimming competition more fun to watch. Same with skiing or whatever. And pretty often, the performance improvements make the sport more boring to watch due to predictable optimal tactic.
An athlete creates something that many people do happily pay for, directly or indirectly. That is value.
Not everybody considers it worth paying for, obviously. But that's not the criteria for "value." I mean, there are a lot of things other people pay for that I don't care about.
Because it does not seem to work that
way economically. There are very few people
on top who earn and massively more of those
who are in financial loss.
For many sports, the answers are "yes" and "probably not."
It's exactly the same like you could be the best jazz trumpeter in the world, and broke.
You have to be on top of a popular sport, whose events are broadcast and viewed by huge numbers of people.
Seems like a familiar pattern.
The guy in this article is not really even low ranking. There are millions of people who play tennis multiple times a week and wish they could rank that high. He is actually already in an elite group.
It seems like it's really only a fraction of the top 1% that can make this into a viable healthy career.
Anyone who is even surviving as a pro tennis player without another source of income has elite skills.
Articles like this make me almost thankful for a lack of physical gifts. An obsessive personality combined with any natural athletic talent would likely have lead to a futile attempt to make a living from sport. Instead, my career is as unglamorous as described in the TFA but the wages are certainly better. And I am probably fitter and get more enjoyment out of recreational sports than most who were truly top-level athletes at some point in their lives. If there's a higher power out there, I am pretty sure they had my back here.
I’m a radiographer. Several times I’ve scanned kids aged less than 10 for pretty badly injured joints related to sport. Stuck in my mind are two - both completely munted elbows.
One did several hours of tennis every day, and all day Saturday and Sunday. The other had much the same regime for golf.
Their parents were set on making world famous athletes.
It was quite depressing.
Abuse and neglect is only when the parent is mean for no return.
/s
The dream is dead and now they have nothing. Not even the love of the sport they spent 8 hours a day playing from five years old just to get into the D1 programs.
It is pretty easy to look at the hundreds, if not thousands, of professional athletes who have no discipline in many areas of their life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sportsp...
Many years ago, I was the global "head of support" for the main trading application at a large bank.
I sat on the trading floor (b/c most of my users were there) and one of my jobs involved training the newly hired junior traders how to use the software.
The training was usually on their first or second day on the floor. At this point in the story, they were INCREDIBLY polite to me. "Thank you so much for showing us this", "Wow! This training is so great! We really appreciate it!"
Within two or three days, they stopped saying hello or even talking to me unless they were having an issue or there was an outage.
Reading about how ranking determines social interactions in the tennis world resonated rather strongly with me given my experiences working in technology at a bank.
I might be misunderstanding, but it sounds like you're saying meritocratic hierarchy can't exist. The observed behavior of someone in a higher position might simply be because it's their job to detect and correct ignorance and inefficiency.
* some peoples innate tendency.
I have always observed this behaviour as typical for one or two of Moltke's quadrants, people I so far have managed to be quite insulated from.
He was very respectful and appreciative of my assistance.
After the onboarding period I learned that he was hired to be the manager of our team.
Everything changed. Now it was "I am the boss, you are the worker. I will assign you tasks and expect you to complete them. And don't question my decisions!"
That said, you better believe I Do take the extra 5 seconds to say hi to my bosses when I pass them.
I still think it is completely normal to figure out who your close coworkers are and settle into a group after a few days.
I think it is more about organizational structure and immediacy than anything else, unless someone is actively rejecting a greeting.
I work in a department of 100, and have met just about everyone. It would be extremely weird, not to mention distracting to say high to everyone when I walk to my desk. I don't think I am an outlier in that I prioritize greeting in this setting. Yes, that means I'm probably not going to single out some intern that I worked with for a couple days.
I don't think that makes me a psychopath, and it doesn't mean I wouldn't chat with them in an elevator or some similar 1:1 circumstance.
All you have to do is attempt to make eye contact and smile.
High quality work and facilitating the same in others is a far more courteous gesture than any awkward smiles.
Are you autistic?
The vast majority of people appreciate a little eye contact and a smile which is literally the least you can do to acknowledge that they're human and not a piece of furniture.
But I think most would still try to work with them to improve in good faith because that's work. The smile is irrelevant. The happiness comes when you've helped train them up. Then the smile actually means something.
On the flip side, would you feel appreciated or intimidated by a coworker who smiles at you yet carries all that soft power of deep knowledge and skills nobody else at that workplace has?
Smiles can mean a lot more than shallow acknowledgement especially in the workplace. At a social gathering though, sure the smile is just friendly.
>But I think most would still try to work with them to improve in good faith because that's work. The smile is irrelevant.
The OP mentioned walking past a hundred peoples' desks. Do you really need to feel appreciated by a hundred random coworkers to act like a decent human being?
No... ? Where did you get this impression?
Anyway I think we're approaching a learning moment in work culture differences.
Anyone who does heads down work expresses appreciation through competence and willingness to help. When you're in a tight spot and need a solution, getting that help is better than all the smiles in the world. That's teamwork. You can genuinely smile after. I'm not against smiles. I'm just saying they don't mean anything in and of themselves.
Maybe you rubbed a raw nerve because you made me think of those cheesy appreciation e-cards I remember from a previous job a while back. That's about as soulless as it gets.
Smiling usually doesn't, and shouldn't, get you anywhere.
I remember all my (good) instructors.
More so if the lesson was 2 days ago.
Heck, janitorial staff should get more than ignored.
So yeah, odd to drop into such a divide.
If everyone is rushed and miserable, they aren't going to be throwing out pleasantries as they rush through the halls.
OP: > they stopped saying hello or even talking to me
The OP said they completely stopped talking, which is weird to not acknowledge someone you previously would talk to. Seems like sociopathic behavior to me, which these professions tend to attract. They got what they wanted/needed out of the relationship and now could care less.
Languages are full of phrases that get used so often the original meaning gets lost organs others that are heading that way. Raining cats and Dogs is ancient and nobody is quite sure where it came from, but as long as people understand intent there’s no need for to add up correctly.
Words with opposite meanings can end up converging. ‘That’s cool’ and ‘that’s hot’ sometimes have the exact same meaning depending on context.
But the correct formulation is a shrugging question "I could care less?", with the implication that the care-meter is already pegged at zero.
given how cheap is to say hello, and maybe get some advantage from this in the future, this is not very smart sociopathic behavior.
But this maybe be result of culture differences: some people grew up in culture where work is work(with all protocols, like saying hello to coworker), and personal life (interhuman behaviour) is something separate.
Yeah professions like finance both attract and reward sociopathic behavior.
The dedication to become a top .0001% athlete is absolutely nuts and beyond that is uncomprehendable.
https://www.basketballnetwork.net/old-school/when-brian-scal...
0.0001% is one in a million. Or within top 7000 rank out of 7 billion humans globally. Or about 0.001% or one in a 100k out of the 700-1000 million in 20-30 age group.
There are about 70000 pro athletes in the world. So only 1 in a 10000 or 0.01% to be a pro athlete when you are in the age group.
Takes less than a year of recreational devotion for a smart healthy person to get into top 1% globally. getting into 0.01% is obviously more competitive and requires you to give up other things.
(As an aside, I'm surprised to see this in Esquire, do they still publish writing like this or was it a very different magazine "back in the day"?)
* https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/9/12/23870760/tennis-wages-s...
One anecdote: one ranked player made more money restringing other players's rackets than actually competing.
> Those “rich fucks” kept Johnny on the road, mind, as he offered a racket-stringing service to players. Johnny has claimed he’s the only player ever to make a consistent living on the Futures tour, and he kept overheads low, running the school bus on vegetable oil. More recently, he has been making YouTube videos about “extreme couponing”, where he lists the great savings he has made on his weekly grocery shop.
Once at Mammoth in the locker room, I overheard a family mentioning how they bought US olympic ski team jackets from the olympians themselves.
FWIW, Open is one of my favorite books and a very easy read if you're interested.
> Andre Agassi was lonely but never alone, players on the Futures tour are both.
The author here mentions his parents pushing him and his sister to do this. Is the low key story that these are mostly just old money children in a limbo of their parents’ whims and lifelines?
I imagine they could try to transfer to some coaching carrier, open personal business, etc.
The best architectural model maker I knew, also made beautiful furniture. Not going on to be an architect was killing his ego.
"I coulda been a contender" is huge.
Unless it is some pocket sized country (like the Vatican, or Andora) you should be able to find enough students to support yourself and being the number 1 player should help with marketing your coaching business.
Being good yourself doesn't add much to your teaching skills. But it does help marketing a bit if you're targeting an audience that wants to become pro themselves.
Many trainers at clubs here in Sweden are ex-pros who never made the top-200. Even some retired top players work as tennis trainers.
So this escape route exists. Another escape route where you don't have to abandon tennis and still have a chance of going pro is to play at a college in the US.
I don’t understand why these people are continuing
to try to play tennis professionally when the odds
of them making something resembling a living wage
seems so grim
Like, after a few years of trying it’s got to be obvious.
The difference between the top 100 players and the players ranked 400-500 is not that large and crucially, it's perhaps not the sort of difference you might think.
It's not like, say, power lifting where one guy can lift 500lbs every time and another guy can only lift 300lbs and if he's not able to get near 500lbs then yeah, he can probably see this isn't for him.
In tennis, the 100th ranked guy is doing the same stuff as the 1st ranked guy. Just not as consistently. Even a weekend player occasionally smokes an unreturnable winner right down the line.
A few more reasons.
1. As you climb the rankings and earn more, you can afford better coaching etc.
2. A lot of the low ranked guys have some skills equal to the top 10 guys. But one part of their game may be lacking. They think: if I can just improve that one thing I can go on a run. This isn't delusional, it happens a lot, and even the Federers and Nadals of the world improved their games over time. (Nadal had a subpar serve for years; for example)
3. These guys are young. Athletes peak around ~25 years. A 19 year old ranked #500 is still growing. It'd be different if he was 38 years old and still ranked #500.
4. These guys aren't dumb. They know the odds.
And then throughout this training journey you will be subjected to multiple wash-out/filter tests.
The mass of children get filtered out very quickly — genetic predisposition (aka Talent) is either there or it isn’t. Surviving this purge awards you with the words that will curse and haunt you forever: “You’re so talented!”
By the time you hit pro, you have survived multiple of these events. It is now your identity, your ego. And now in the open waters of competition, it just boils down to “train harder” and “do better”. Maybe next year is the year you finally breakout. What’s to stop you and why stop now? You don’t understand what it means to give up. Giving up is how all the others got washed out years ago. You didn’t wash out. You got the scholarships, the state championships, the mentions in local media. You deserve to be there and Glory is just within reach…
Besides. “You’re so talented!”
By the time you finally hit The Wall and the results show that there is a much bigger fish out in this pond, it’s too late. What are you supposed to do now? You skipped all regular education to get here. You sacrificed your whole life! Your parents paid a fortune.
Besides. It will be a massive waste of “talent.”
And so it goes. Maybe you can swallow enough ego to become a high school tennis coach. Maybe you will be able to be the one who picks the next Federer or Williams. Then you will vicariously finally get your glory and honor and fame.
Because you were talented. It’s what you deserved.
And you will spend your whole life chasing it.
I think that's incredibly reductive, although does have a bit of a point.
The gist of the story is that there's a special kind of loneliness when you're always on the cusp of "making it big" in an industry that is very very top-heavy in terms of rewards. (sports, acting, content creation, startup company, restaurant etc.)
You can spend your entire youth chasing this dream, and it's a lot harder for some people to "give up the dream" than others. You can call this being delusional or you can call it the tyranny of high expectations (from others or from themselves).
Yes, it's a lot easier to feed your delusion if you come from money. That's where a big "ick" for rich people come from - some of them are just incredibly mediocre in terms of skills, with their egos boosted by daddy's wallet.
I don't think you necessarily have to come from money, although having middle-class parents and a stable household helps a lot.
Once you hit 30+ though, that kind of lifestyle begins to lose its appeal pretty quick (for the people supporting you as well).
Either they want to do it anyway or they think they have to do it.
Either you want to do it or you think you have to do it.
[1] https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12101579/01/23...
If 60% of companies fail that means if you start 6 businesses then you have a 95% probability of having a successful business.
Only 1.6% of college football players transition to the NFL.
Here is a list of a few of them: https://press.farm/startups-fail-founders-bounced-back-and-b...
Some of these founders had two or more failed businesses before reaching success.
For business owners, starting a business is a matter of filing a few pieces of paperwork. Starting a business is quite literally an independent event from starting the business prior.
> Some players did go out partying locally, which I always felt was a stupid thing to do. Why put yourself through the budget travel, practice and expense to then go drinking in some remote and isolated corner of the world?
I'm sure Futures events are isolating and lonely, but it seems the author was quick to cast judgment on the players who prioritized socializing over winning at all costs.
I'm not so sure. These guys don't earn jack shit, even if they win small Futures/Challengers. Taxes, equipment, travel, etc.. adds up quickly. Forget about coaching at that level.
Not the right environment to go party with someone one night and then have to beat them the next day in order to put food on the table.
Keep in mind that at this level, tennis is fucking insanely hard. A few guys from my high school tried that level (they all played D1 at top schools, a few were top 20 USTA as juniors, one made top 3 ITF and was highly ranked within the college game) and none of them fared well.
These (challengers/futures level players) aren't some random scrubs - these are often times guys who either played top college ball, or guys who were top 100 ITF juniors (or top player in their country/region) who never had the game to get to the next level, or guys who were just not quite good enough to make top 100 ATP and need to grind every day to get auto entry to qualies at majors or ATP Masters events.
100% agree on this.
I do not know in particular with Tennis but the same is true in MMA also. When I used to do blogging/reporting about MMA I talked with a prominent fighter about the economics of being an UFC fighter.
In a nutshell:He was about to participate of an card event [1] and in case of victory he would take home USD 22-24K and he explained that whole preparation would be USD 29-32K.
The costs were: - Flights (himself and his team with 2 trainers) - Sparring (if you need to do the camp in USA, probably we will have at least 3 sparring partners) - Special Medicine/Supplement (since the Nevada State Athletic Commission had some specific requirements in terms of anti-doping he could not have all normal supplements/medicine) - His agent - Pre-Camp / Camp (For instance if you're grappler and you will face a striker you will need to adjust your training accordingly) - Post-Fight doctors (general scanning and treatment in case of some severe injury)
After that I was so shocked about how that economics did not make any sense, and he explained to me that the whole thing in UFC is just to build his brand and bring more students to his gym, and prepare his own gym for camp to other fighters.
I have absolute respect for the rest of 99% in any sport because its a very tough business and its very different from what we see in TV.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC_on_Fox:_Lawler_vs._Brown
Showing up to work with a hangover is not a great thing to do.
And even if I did, socialising with your coworkers has a strong chance of being much better for your career than another early night.
Tennis stars, youtubers tech startups, videogames on steam, even drug cartels...
In a given year, the top 5 in any of these categories can end up absorbing more than 50% of the entire market!
There should be a class in high school that goes over the wealth distribution of various industries...
You can be top 100 in Sweden and be a professional making good money. Being top 100 in Sweden is actually achievable. But in tennis you have top 128 in the world.
This means there’s a career for people who aren’t the best talent wise but are willing to contribute to the team in other ways.
But there are simply more spots and to be top 128 in tennis is almost impossible.
I assume and hope he was in Palo Alto as a student and just wanted to make some beer money. Otherwise that sign would reflect a pretty tough situation.
The Stanford faculty family swim and tennis club has a pro, the local Palo Alto tennis and skating club has a pro…there are a lot of them to go around.
Sure he’s not got much status in the tennis community, but everyone else is impressed if you say you're 378th in the world. All he had to do was spend time with non tennis ppl in all of the amazing places he went to.
I hate meeting some of my former colleagues. Worse, success in academia is not entirely determined by how smart you are - your ability to socialize and market had far greater impact.
Ofc. academics' priority for knowledge is far far lower today than fame and money.
When you win you all go out for pizza and have fun. Or you lose and still go out for pizza.
Playing a single player sport like tennis seems lonely just thinking about it.
I used to produce electronic music on my own, as a side gig; it felt very solitary and I am thankful to be now part of a band where I can interact with other musicians who became also good friends; money-wise it is worse but it's not my main income so I'm fine with that.
As a software developer, I have worked for a few years as a solo freelancer, it felt in some ways like what the author describes in the OP, moving to a "traditional" 9-to-5 dev job actually felt like a breath of fresh air, despite all the shortcomings of that type of job.
I've gone both directions. Made electronic music by myself. Then started a couple of bands in my 20s. Those ended when I had kids and moved across the country. Then I got back into making electronic music by myself in my 40s.
I miss the cameraderie of being in a band dearly. But at the same time, the logistics are so much easier making electronic music on my own. I can just noodle on it whenever I get a spare minute. There's something lonely about the resulting music always being exactly what I could come up with, but there's also something rewarding about being able to really dig in to my own weird tastes and preferences without having to compromise with bandmates. I'm sure it would be very hard to find someone else who wanted to make electronic music close enough to what I'm into right now to be worth collaborating.
I agree with your sentiment relative to being free from compromise, in my previous comment I should have added that there are shortcomings to being in a band and the struggle over creative direction is the biggest one IMHO. At least over the years I have gotten better at quickly working out whether or not a band is for me, and if it's not I can get out of it before making too many commitments. As opposed to my teens where I kept playing, for a long time, in bands I didn't like just because my mates where there.
Team sports are more optimized for spectators than for the fun of the athlete.
It is almost as if it is better to have failed out early than to spend your prime years trying to break it into the top 100.
Classical music, art, poet, writers, pro athletes all fall into this category.
From Wikipedia: His pro career spanned 7 years from 2005-2012. He earned $247,686 in prize money. He made it to a few grand slams, even playing Novak at the US Open, although he retired from the match in the second set due to food poisoning!
- He had no permanent physical residence aka he didn't own a house or rent an apartment (he did have a PO Box in a city just for a legal address)
- Everything he owned was in 4 suitcases
- Other than scheduled PTO, the firm decided where he would go for consulting projects (often on short notice) which could be anywhere in the world
- When he DID have PTO, the firm would pay for ANYTHING he wanted to do. Rent a speedboat? Check! Fly him to Asia to see a friend? Check!
He had a girlfriend (who I was friends with and how I knew him) so I don't think he was totally isolated. That being said, must be tough to put down roots in that situation.
Versus a consultant where you're racking up miles and points, have a per diem, and usually treated to a client dinner and/or sports game. Personally I enjoyed traveling for work when I was young and single. Depending on the hotel you're staying at, you can meet other traveling workers and commiserate.
For example, the 101st ranked ATP (men) player has made over $450k from prize money in just a little over half of this season. The 102nd ranked player has made over $330k so far. Considering that there are two more majors left this year which they'll likely qualify for, they'll likely make another several hundred thousand more at-least this year from just competition.
Many of the top 150 tennis players often make the equivalent amount to their prize money or greater in sponsorships. The lack of sustainable income from just competition becomes more true once you look outside the top 150.
The low ranking tennis players that the article referred to were outside the top 300, which meant that they were stuck playing the futures tournaments where there is little possibility for money. Conor Niland, who wrote the article, only briefly achieved a career high ranking of 129, but spent most of his career ranked outside of the top 300.
https://www.atptour.com/en/players/luca-van-assche/v0dz/over...
https://www.atptour.com/en/players/yoshihito-nishioka/n732/o...
IE how much does a tennis coach cost? Travel and lodging for tournaments. I'm assuming they might have a medical expert or nutritionist on the staff as well?
Edit: I think a handful of people are misunderstanding my point. I'm saying that not everything has to have a monetary return on investment. Even if the "opportunity cost" of spending all that time grinding is super high, the return is just the enjoyment that one gets from playing the game or from feeling accomplished to reach a certain goal/rank even if it's not pro level.
sure more money translates to better coaching probably, but it seems that ceteris paribus better players can spend many years being better.
so basically rising players have an logarithmic curve with an asymptote. and sure they are getting better and higher, but they should estimate their peak. especially because even if current top players retire younger ones can easily take the spot from more experienced players.
all in all the current ranking system is very efficient (lots of data points, it's not like boxing where matches are organized after some initial success to maximize the money made, slowly take on opponents that seem beatable or otherwise lucrative, etc.)
tennis and other very athletic individual sports are mature (progress is mostly due to technology, dietary know-how, better data-driven coaching), and there's just no big chance of an underdog beating the numbers. (especially considering that the numbers are much better, again due to more and better data and compute)
In my case, I experienced this with cryptocurrency. I was a contributor/developer to a major crypto project (was once ranked top 10 in the world). At one point when the token price climbed from $1 to $7 (for no apparent reason), people came out of of the woodwork to talk to me and even offered to work for me for free... Then when the price dropped back down a few weeks later (also for no apparent reason), most people disappeared completely except one guy who kept in touch and I collaborated with later (he happened to know me from a different project I built).
It's weird how that works. But I guess tennis must feel lonely because it's closer to a meritocracy; if you fail, you can't dispute the score, it's your fault. There are enough matches that you can't really claim that you had unlucky pairings... Maybe a few times but what about the other 50 times? If you fail at tennis, it's close to truth to suggest that you're just not good enough. In speculative crypto investments and tech startups, there are no rules and you typically only get one meaningful make-or-break opportunity in your entire career and also there is an almost infinite number of variables. Most of these variables have nothing to do with you... So if you fail, it's probably some random investor's fault for dumping the token at a bad time or Elon started hyping up DogeCoin and so all the focus shifted towards memecoins away from your project... It's completely out of your control so there is nothing to beat yourself up about.
When was this written? He forgot Novak.