The loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player

By random chance I recently had a flight seated next to a coach for a young player who was in the women's Future bracket. The coach had been a Future player once too.

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.

As a parent with kids who play junior tennis, I remind them after every loss (and win) that this is just a hobby.

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.

Most individual competitive sports are like this. The top of the crop get the bulk of the tournament payouts, the bottom get a pittance that barely cover their costs to attend the tournament, and the ones who miss the cut entirely get a mound of debt for making their way out there to merely be a warm body for other talent to route. Sponsorships help cover some costs but not everyone can get very lucrative sponsor deals especially a low rank player. There's honestly better money giving lessons for probably $150-250 an hour or so than there is making a go at the world stage. I'm sure that's a path many end up taking after the writing is clear on the wall.

> The true unfortunates, though, were the ones who were talented enough to rationally hope to advance. These were people who grew up as the best tennis players in their country, but were stuck between 300 and 600 in the world, not quite contending for the Challenger Tour nor the qualifiers at grand slams, but winning just often enough to keep their tennis dream faintly alive.

Seems like a familiar pattern.

I spent much of my late teens and early twenties cursing my thin boned and uncoordinated body, wishing their was some sport in which I would not be the worst, let alone the best. I idolized athletes across all sorts of sports and wished I could become one.

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.

> By the time he had cracked the top 20, he was ignoring me completely.

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 really recommend reading any of David Foster Wallace's essays about tennis. The book "String Theory" collects all his writing on the subject. He was a lifelong fan of the sport, but also a nationally ranked junior player and he's able to provide exceptional insight in the insane dedication (as well as talent) needed to reach even the lowest rungs of the competitive tennis world, and what a grind the tour can be for lower ranked professionals.

Vox had a video a few months ago, "Why most tennis players struggle to make a living":

* 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.

Andre Agassi spent the 9th most time as #1 tennis player in the world and in his book, Open, he says multiple times how lonely of a sport tennis is. I think the loneliness of tennis affects the whole spectrum of the ranks, not just the bottom.

FWIW, Open is one of my favorite books and a very easy read if you're interested.

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 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 made virtually no lasting friendships on tour through my seven years, despite coming across hundreds of players my own age living the same life as my own.

> 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.

It's crazy how strong the power law distribution holds for success in the real world.

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...

When I was a child I dreamed of being a professional sportsperson - a soccer star or a tennis pro. Now in my late 20s, I shudder thinking of the pressure/stress, injuries and constant competitiveness that my life would have been if I had gone down that path.

Was just reflecting on this yesterday: when I parked my car I saw a paper sign on the lamppost: “learn tennis from a professional”. The person was the number 1 player in Nepal, ranked in the 1200s professionally.

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.

This guy could have had so much fun travelling the world.

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.

Sounds awfully like academia.

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.

I always felt that the point of playing sports was to do something as a team. Drawing up a football play to throw the ball to the open receiver. Score a touchdown and everyone gets high fives. Or get the basketball rebound and pass to an open teammate for the shot.

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.

Man, this is such a downer. I think most rational people avoid a professional sports career unless they “have that special something,” but so few do. To scrape and struggle for years on end all alone during it must absolutely gut a person.

Sad story to read.

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.

Ironically enough, professional pickleball players today are making more money than WNBA players and more money than most of the folks that this article talks about.

This is the problem with any profession where there is a pyramid structure people vie to be part of. It takes an immense of dedication to reach that spot and the competition is insane. You spend all waking hours working on that craft with no assurance that you can even make a living off it. This is why I never pushed my kids towards sports as much as I love it.

Well-written, at least he had writing to fall back on. There's a humour just under the surface in his reflections.

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!

Not really sure how this is much different from any consultant who does long projects on the road, at least as far as social isolation is concerned, really. You go to work, you do a job, and then you go back to the hotel. What I suspect is happening on top of everything else for these players is that (a) they're in a competitive field so they have to stay on top of their rest and diet at all times, (b) isolation is definitely a thing, but (c) many of them come from upper middle class backgrounds and it's a culture shock to bleed through money just to travel for tournaments and have proper gear.

Yes, the talent quickly falls off a cliff once you get into weird, niche sports. Remember this when the Olympics roll around. If the truly gifted set themselves towards many of those events, the records would be obliterated.

In pro tennis only the top 100 players actually make more money than they spend.

Is there a self reinforcing effect that keeps high ranking tennis players in the higher ranks, other than playing regularly against other high ranked players?

Reminds of some of the essays on theplayerstribune.com - would highly recommend taking a look at the website for real stories of professional athletes.

Very interesting reading that. The part about how ranking affect social interactions was particularly relatable for me.

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.

Sounds like pro tennis has a lot in common with startup world and SV

"The greats in tennis often become known by their first names – Roger, Rafa, Serena..."

When was this written? He forgot Novak.