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.