www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jun/27/the-loneliness-of-the-low-ranking-tennis-player
‘I’m good, I promise’: the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player
This and Break Point really shine a light.
The best player at your school sucks compared to the best player in the county, who still sucks nationally. And then if you're not from one of the big tennis nations, they suck too. Must be rough.
Yep. And this applies to any competitive field
It’s genuinely one of the best arguments for going to college - getting a reality check.
I’m not an athlete, but a musician. I was in shitty bands in high school and we thought we were pretty good. Compared to everyone at my school, we were. I was gonna be a rock star.
Then I got to college and was blown away by how much better all these other dudes were. Turns out they were ALSO the best at their high schools. And when you get the best of the best from a few hundred different schools together, you discover only a few are actually worth anything.
If I hadn’t gone to college, I’d probably have spent a decade playing in bars convinced I could be big someday. Now it’s just a fun hobby and that’s alright.
Social media has really open the world up to the real amount of talent out there. Americas Got Talent, American Idol, and all these competition shows got nothing on the pool of talent that is stewing in every corner of the world.
We all need reality checks and temper our expectations.
Still doesn't mean you should, fold. Enjoy and pursue your dreams if you can and are able to, but understand everyone has to go through the trials and obstacles that come with it be it sports, music, acting, etc.
Just want to point out that there are also insanely talented people in fields that no one even thinks about as "talented."
My dad hung drywall. I would go with him and help with his crew every summer. When I tell you it was like artwork watching these dudes work. And I'm old enough now to have seen quite a few people hang rock. My dad is talented in a field that only a few people will ever recognize or even think it's a talent.
I work in education. Teachers are praised a bit more by society for their talent, but it's never talked about the way an athlete or musician is.
All the more reason to try to find internal validation in your work. You will most likely never be recognized for your talents. Go out of your way to praise other people when you see them doing a good job, you'd be surprised how little people are told they are talented.
This is such wholesome advice. I agree. And judging by how you are describing your dad, I'd say he was quite talented at what he did.
As an adult, I wish I knew people like your dad. I would kill for a talented plumber.
There's also several occupations where the number of people skilled to perform that role is considerably lower than the number of opportunities. Almost all of these occupations would be considered unsexy. But then, very good safe career options.
I always remembered seeing a rollerblading crew on agt years ago and everyone was all amazed and how cool it was when it was all stuff my friends and I were doing at 14 years old and was nothing compared to what the best were doing. That really opened my eyes to how mediocre the people on those shows really are.
Conversely I wasn’t the best at anything at my school, but I had fun in bands and sports.
Then at college I wasn’t good enough at any of it to join in, so now I don’t ever do it.
The secret is that you don't have to be good at something to have fun
But you do have to be good at something to make the team and/or pass the audition.
Turns out they were ALSO the best at their high schools.
I always like this scene in Center Stage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRNTQqfR4dU
Everyone there is the best from the previous level. And even if they work harder than they have ever worked before they might not succeed(join the actual Ballet Company).
Relevant joke: "What do you call the person who graduates last in their class at medical school?" Answer: "Doctor"
Yeah, I went to a music college. Thought I was the shit when I got in, on my first day I got a huge reality check that had me questioning how I even got accepted in the first place. Never shook that feeling, even in the 10 years since graduating.
He doesn't mind, if he doesn't, make the scene. He's got a daytime job, he's doing alright.
He can play the Honky Tonk like anything. Saving it up for Friday night.
With the sultans.
Going to college is a requirement anyway, but it also shows people how insane some of the most competitive "intelligence based" careers are.
I was valedictorian of my high school and went to study physics at a university where every other student was also valedictorian of their respective high school. First week, the students are already sizing each other up in terms of their SAT score (anything less than perfect was embarrassing), international competitions won, and what classes you are skipping out of. It very quickly turned me off from theoretical physics, or really any sort of academia, as a career. I am very grateful I had that realization and changed majors early on instead of grinding it out for years, just waiting for that one publication to catapult me into fame.
Going to uni made me realise I don't love my instrument and that I just enjoyed being in a band. I've done alright for never having practised my instrument outside of that band and the band has given me some amazing memories. But I have no desire to be an amazing drummer, or to be famous and that's OK. I can just play fun shows.
Success in the "music industry" is barely correlated with talent anyway. Even if you had managed to somehow be recognized as the best musician in the entire world, you're not going to become a multimillionaire music artist selling millions of copies of your albums. You'd probably end up teaching or performing among the minuscule pockets of society that cares about musical talent.
You don't need musical talent to make it as a band. Too much of it hinders you indirectly as a skilled performance makes the listeners feel like they're listening to a lecture rather than being entertained.
You don’t need to be the best, you just gotta be good enough
Yeah. And talent doesn’t always go with hard work, or people skills, connections, luck, etc.
I’d argue there’s plenty of success to be had. Being a teacher and living a career in music while making ends meets with still success in its own way
And yet some people think it’s all down to hard work. We are all identical and if you work hard enough you can be as good as the best.
The follow on to that is that if someone like this works hard and isn’t at the top then it must be someone holding them back, and that’s when they look for scape goats to blame.
I was a borderline D1 American Football prospect.
I was 6’3” 240 lbs and relatively fast, at least compared to my high school competition.
I decided not to play in college, but was constantly asked by people my Freshman year if I was on the team.
So I decided I was going to try to walk on.
Until this guy moved into the dorm across the hall from me. He was 6’6” 290, all muscle. He was literally bigger, faster, and stronger than me in every way. He was also on the team.
I got to talking with him one day and found out he was third string at the positions I played.
Third string. He didn’t even play in blowouts, he was on the team to provide a human hitting dummy for the starters and backups, and go in if something catastrophic happened to both.
I was a 90 lb weakling compared to this dude.
And I quickly gave up on thinking I could walk on to the team
This! But for me it was simply my study subject. In school I was the best or one of the best in math and physics. So naturally I started a bachelor in physics. I knew that university is harder than high school, but oh boy did it hit hard in the first semester to be downgraded from one of the best to middle field and struggling to pass exams.
I retrospective it is absolutely obvious. Only people who are good at a subject will study it and when your "peer group" shifts the average to best in that subjects, it is only natural that one is downgraded to the middle.
This happened to me. Our band was gonna blow up. We had 30 original songs. We moved to a big city to ‘make it.’ Our focus was music. Practiced four days a week, played lots of shitty bars and Monday nights. Then we became friends with another band. They had professional careers unrelated to music. They practiced about twice a month. They blew us out of the water and for them it wasn’t even a top five hobby.
The opposite can also be true; I was in one of the top 10 school band programs in the US, but we felt like we were only just okay.
Then I got to college and found out that comparatively, most of the people there, while competent, were definitely worse than my high school bandmates.
This me?
Turns out that you needed to be the best at marketing, anyhow.
I mean, Stevie Ray Vaughn did that until he got discovered. Hell, sometimes you don’t even need to be good, your stage presence can do all the work for you if you are charismatic enough. Truth is, all of those people at your college probably didn’t make it either.
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I never said anything about technicality. I agree that there’s more to music than shredding, but the same principle applies to those factors too - just because you’re the best in a small group doesn’t mean that will be true when you move into a much larger group.
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And for every one hit wonder, there's a thousand more artists who are zero hit wonders.
I'm not saying everyone should just give up, but there's also nothing wrong with deciding that you don't want to pursue something. A lot of people would rather be accountants with a hobby than busting their ass for years on the road playing hundred dollar gigs.
zero hit wonders I agree but there is actually a trope about no hit wonders.
But music is subjective? No one ever becomes the best at music. Anyone that has seen at least marginal success in music already could have a song blow up.
If you’re talking about musical talent when in the sense of being good at playing instruments then sure, but you really don’t need to know how to play them to be successful anymore.
If the worst NBA player who makes a roster this season walked into a YMCA pick up game they'd likely be the best player anyone else on the court ever play against by leaps and bounds
There’s no “likely” thing about it. It’s a fact. The worst NBA player who’s been retired for 20 years is better than your best weekend warrior.
Brian Scalabrine challenged amateurs and college players and destroyed them.
"I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me" The Scallenge was hilarious.
Think over the course of 4 1v1 games, Scalabrine scored 44 points, his opponents scored 6 points combined. He then took on 3 other amateurs in a 1v3 game and won 11-1.
I saw his production about this on TV. He destroyed several neighborhood legends and pretty decent players easily.
This is true on so many levels. I was a pro at my sport for 20 years. Was the actual “pro” At a fancy club in Vail many years ago. For three years a “taught” lessons. Never actually gave one. Every single narcissist small business owner or person who thought that were the best at their club only wanted to pay to play me.
Since they were paying they would get mad when it was obvious I wasn’t really trying while still destroying them if you know what you were looking at and not the score. Then I would play for real and it would last 3 minutes and they would not score a point. People are crazy and drink their own cool aid.
Lol love this. I played in a small amateur tennis league and eventually I got scheduled to play against the pro because I gave some older players problems with my speed and agility. We played for 30-40 minutes and he casually handled every trick and skill i had and eventually said “How about we just call it a draw and I tell you everything you are doing incorrectly.” It was a very kind way of telling me how much I sucked.
i was a decent basketball player in my city growing up and when i got on the court with low level d1 guys i felt so out of place it was like they were playing a different game
Played in an intramural basketball league on our base. I was the best player and leading scorer on the team and had a bunch of people in my ear telling me I should try walking on to a team when I got out of the military. I started to believe them. The reward for winning the championship was the winning team got to play an exhibition game against a local D1 college basketball team. They were in a low end conference and hadn’t had a winning season in years. They won the tipoff and they swung the ball over to the 2. He was three inches taller than me and about 15 pounds heavier. Jab stepped and went by me. “If they’re even they’re leavin.” Well…we weren’t even even. About ten feet out he just elevates and two hand dunks it. Thus ended my basketball dreams. We lost something like 110-39.
kept it close I see
When I was a little younger I played pickup weekly with a guy who was a Juco All American WR in football and another guy who played Juco basketball. They were by far the best players I'll ever get on a court with and they were both under 5'9. They were also both 10+ years removed from competitive ball in their early 30s. Quick as lightning and skilled in a way that I'm still sort of blown away by.
Put them on a court against two small guards from low level D1 schools, even in their athletic primes, and they'd get dusted.
A guy at my office was a backup in a high end D1 program. Played with him once and he singlehandedly controlled the game with absolutely zero effort.
He'd coast through possessions, score or assist every time he touched the ball, and if someone pissed him off he'd drop 10 straight without breaking a sweat. Just a totally different game to us low-talent try harder.
“I’m closer to LeBron than you are to me.” - Brian Scalabine.
Was such a g move when White Mamba went around playing his haters one on one and just completely dominating them. Like no one scoring at all.
The worst player in the NBA is better at basketball than you are at anything.
Correction, they’d be one of the best college basketball D-1 players
That’s the analogy I always think of when watching Achilles storm the beach in Troy.
He was the Peak Kobe Bryant showing up to a 30+ over YMCA league. An elite soldier really could have mowed down 20 part timers IMO
Dude your talking about a literal half god, not a figurative half god
During the last year of high school there was time, Thursday mornings before morning tea I think, not assigned to actual classes. Sometimes they would have stuff to teach, like general life skills and whatever. And other times it was just sports. For one semester we were playing soccer. I had played soccer at that point for 12 years. And I was nervous as all hell because it was something I had done almost my whole life but I wasn't particularly athletic or coordinated. I thought I was going to be embarrassed.
I was a fucking superhero. I knew how to play. I knew all the skills. I knew all the tactics. There was just such a gap between me and anyone that never played organised soccer in high school. The best athletes in school couldn't beat me.
Joe Ingles looks like a (really tall) accountant and he would make any guys at the Y look like they were standing still
That’s what always cracks me up about the question that gets brought up every year about “could [really good college team] beat [really bad pro team]?”
The answer is objectively no. Always. No debate. The pro team has 100% pro players obviously. The college team has maybe 30% pro caliber players at the time. And 30% is being really generous.
I’m thinking mostly of (American) football, but it applies to other sports too, it’s just way more laughable with football.
I’m sure your 19 year old guard who struggled a little bit against Nowheresville St is going to hold his own against a NFL defensive tackle. /s
I constantly see idiots claiming that the college football champs could beat the worst team in the NFL.
That team that won in college? They have a few NFL caliber players on their team. The worst team in the NFL is filled with NFL caliber players.
It really got annoying when people would say this about like Alabama or 2013 FSU with the only argument being how many draft picks were on those teams. Like buddy an NFL team will have 40 or 50 draft picks on it.
Yeah and not just players good enough to be drafted, players good enough to be drafted and play well enough year over year to stay in the league.
To add to this, how many guys get drafted in the later rounds and the scouting report is something like,” Not an immediate starter. Shows excellent quickness and first step. Needs a whole season of nfl strength training to add size and power and enough reps to get comfortable with the new level of competition.” Good chance the guy drafted with that scouting report was in the top five best players on his team, if not the very best player. And he likely will be a situational player at best in his first year and potentially on the roster bubble in 4 years. That guy was probably the best player everywhere he went his entire football career.
You can tell they don't know shit when they say that because it's always skill guys. Like Jamar chase and burrow being amazing immediately in the NFL. That's true.
What's not true is neither one of them would be doing shit in an NFL game with the LOADED LSU team, because their offensive line would be fucking destroyed. So would their d line.
They have great DBs, so what. The NFL will find the weakness and exploit it.
It's not even worth comparing, but it will still happen, like you said, when a team has like 15 picks.
Also, I don't care what college you go to, your playbook isn't an NFL playbook. The schemes they would throw at these teams, lol.
Any NFL practice squad guy was a college starter who at worst got some all-conference votes, and in 99%+ of cases was the best player at their high school.
Im late to this post, but in Marcus Allen’s biography he wrote about how mentally exhausting this fact was for a lot of guys in the NFL.
Up until that point they had basically been the chosen one in their world view. Likely the best player ever at their high school, likely an all-American or all-conference college player. Every person they know from childhood would talk to them like they’re the next coming.
Then you get to the league and might not get through training camp. Tough gig.
There was a shortstop from my hometown, Augie Schmidt, back in the late 70s/80s. High school phenom, drafted second overall, won the Golden Spikes.... and still couldn't crack a big league roster. Baseball is particularly tough because you're in the minors with guys who have been there for YEARS, trying to get even a 40-mam call up.
They wouldn't win or get close to winning, but this talking point is really outdated. Now that recruiting is national/all the players worth a damn move to one of Texas/Florida/California/Georgia to play high school football, it's not weird for top college teams to be 1/3rd NFL players with multiple all pros. For example, 2019 LSU's passing attack is simply one of, if not the best NFL passing attacks. That in itself is not typical, but it also happened and it's not that far off from typical.
I'd also argue that it's not comparable to tennis at all. There was a sponsored tennis player about two years younger than me I went to school with. His career peak was competing in the World Tour and peaking in the 800s. You would think the city was courting Amazon HQ for the amount of money and mountains that were moved to pander to him. For example, the middle school is 2 blocks away from the high school. The high school had pretty new tennis courts. The middle school built tennis courts for him.
There is only one team I could even argue going toe to toe but ultimately I think the bears still would have won was the 2021 Georgia bulldogs. The entire defense and o line were first rounders. Justin fields would be the X factor on how Chicago would win.
The best player at your school sucks compared to the best player in the county, who still sucks nationally. And then if you're not from one of the big tennis nations, they suck too. Must be rough.
Observing four years of HS tennis was eye opening. The top couple of kids were good tennis players but they would get smoked, and I mean smoked by the really good players who all ended up at the prep school known as a tennis factory. And those kids, as good as they were, weren’t that good, because if they were, they’d never touch a HS tennis court because they’d already be on a circuit. And the best any of those kids could hope for was to make a community college team because the major universities are essentially a European pro-am circuit as far as tennis goes.
Not even just the major universities. My tiny private christian college had no native US players on the mens team.
Oh, yeah, I should’ve made that more clear in my original comment. Pretty much everything above your local 2-year, associate degree community college level is a European tour.
Scuse me, Australian-European tour 😉
I played at a school that's won multiple NY championships in recent history. I was decent, but never stood a chance at making varsity at that kind of school. The crazy thing is, there was a kid in my grade that was so good that everyone agreed it was a waste of his time to play for the team. So he just did his own private singles tournaments instead, and he ended up getting a scholarship to a good D1 school. Watching him play made me realize there are levels to this shit.
I played HS tennis, and during that time our main rival’s top player was very highly ranked nationally in whatever division he was in. Another rival got this exchange student from Argentina who was ranked at a lower level, but still ranked. At our regional meet, those two played and they scheduled the match to happen after all the other matches so everyone could watch.
Highly ranked nationally broke serve on Argentinians first two serves and also broke his soul. The talent disparity when you go from level to level is obvious
I experienced the college version of a similar story.
My college team had a new foreign player join us. (Three foreigners total, I think.) He grew up at an academy. He was or had recently been Top 500 in the world.
He was expected to replace me as the #1 player. That made me highly motivated, obv.
We were set to play each other when the team assembled on campus. We played last in the fight-for-position matches. So I hydrated and got good sleep and what not.
I played a good match and beat him 6-0, 6-1 IIRC. Just like in your story, it was like it broke him. He never even tried hard after that. Never challenged for the top couple spots. It was weird. In tennis you lose a lot. You’re supposed to bounce back….
Was anyone else wondering how the incredible keanu reeves and patrick swayze movie was involved at first?
One has to be insanely gifted (genetics, upbringing) and pathologically dedicated/ disciplined to rise to the very top, IMO. Perhaps a rare bird will rise up now and then who is just freakishly gifted, but most insanely gifted athletes still work their tail off and are one of the last off the field, out of the gym, etc. They’re completely consumed in their craft.
A good read. Really shines a light into the shadows of the great players who are just not quite good enough. Must be brutal to be an elite level athlete who loses regularly and loses money too.
It says at the bottom this is an excerpt from his book, good marketing.
Yeah. Imagine being in the top 0.01% of your field and you’re still not good enough or making money.
It’s so common in sports. My dad has medaled over 10 times in the US Nationals and a handful of times at Worlds in his sport. Lifetime he’s spent, not made, well over $100k on equipment, travel, training, nutrition, etc.
In tennis?
No. I didn’t want to name the sport or give too many details, because it would be very easy to figure out who my dad was. Didn’t want to share that on Reddit.
Must be darts. Just kidding.
Nailed it! My dad is that 17 year old that’s been crushing darts lately.
I'm going to guess weightlifting. Want to guess judo but that's like impossible to medal in Worlds if you're a US athlete.
Nope, but good guess!
I'm his dad. Go to bed.
Ha! My dad was the same - at pole vaulting. But there was never money in pole vaulting anyway.
Yeah, not nearly as lucrative as pole dancing
Bwahahaha
Medicine is nice because you can be in the bottom 1% and still make 6 figures lol
Esports players in shambles
I think about old Halo and CoD pros from time to time. Back in the day, they could barely make a living wage, then their game just kinda slowly falls apart. They're left with thousands of hours of their lives gone with nothing to show for it except whatever friendships remain. They age out and have to sit with their finished dreams and say, "well, now what?"
I dunno, something about esports careers flaming out makes me sadder than athletes, mostly because you have to put so much of your life into the grind for years straight, then adapt to something completely different or plummet into obscurity. League of Legends and Counter-Strike pros have it a bit better, but what esports have had that level of continuity or longevity?
That’s very interesting about the Halo players. I have lots of experience spending all my free time on Halo to be only good against my friends in a LAN party and then garbage on any public lobby.
I have an element of this with iRacing. Basically, it’s one of the few sports where you’re just thrown into the same rating system and competition system as the arguably the fastest person alive, Max Verstappen, the real life F1 World Champion. And then the thousands of people in between. I can practice my heart out, have 20 years experience and still be last place in a race. They constantly assess your skill and make sure you’re in a fair race lobby, so you could potentially never win a race! You have to develop coping mechanisms like weighting what it means to come in 15th place.
funny to see you mention iracing, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw your original comment about esports.
only 50 or probably less players can make even minimum wage off their skill, but you have a lot more putting 20hrs of practice for races, just to always stay a field filler in championships without ever seeing a return on the time invested. tough esport.
Precisely, and the way I’ve gotten through that feeling is understanding that it’s really not about what place you ended up in (though that’s nice too) but rather, who you beat. I look at the field of competition line by line to see who I managed to beat. Also understanding that it’s a privilege just to be included in a grid with great racers and finish the race, especially if it’s on the lead lap. iRating is a great system and achievement as well.
Sports are really the only field like this and it’s unbelievably painful. The top 0.1% achievers in almost any other field would be wildly celebrated and compensated.
It’s certainly true in the classical music world. You’ve gotta be at the absolute zenith of the field in order to make decent money.
Yeah true. But those are only specific jobs. Someone who’s a 0.1% violin player will easily find work as a musician, maybe just not in a top orchestra.
I see these NBA players that sit the entire game on the bench and realize they were most likely the best players in their high school state and were probably huge stars in college. What a deflation to spend the next 4 years on the bench or maybe playing in an Italian league.
Well, unlike a tennis player ranked in the 400s, who can barely pay for their flights to tournaments, the worst player in the NBA, is at least a millionaire.
Not necessarily. Every team has 2 way players. They are players that spend part time in the minor league (G league) and part in NBA. And then occasionally players come in for short 10 day contracts. They are all "NBA players" but are unlikely to make large salaries. And of course G league players are not paid well.
Brian Scalabrine ("I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me.") rode the bench for 11 seasons and made $20 million+. That CBA definitely favors for NBA players.
And now he has a great tv gig for the Celtics
The bottom tier NBA players are still getting paid a TON and if they leverage their experience to get into coaching or personal training for aspiring players they can continue to make crazy money. NBA and NFL money is a whole different level compared to this
Being a bench rider in the NBA isn’t comparable. Guys at the end of the bench still will make millions. And if they can just stick to a roster long enough they get the veteran minimum to secure even more money.
And typically these kinds of guys will get there 8-10 years. 8-10 years getting front row seats to the best basketball league in the world while having access to the best trainers and basketball players, getting paid to travel the country and the world, and meet high profile individuals in the industry.
And at the end of their career these kind of guys often transition into another job in the industry. Often times becoming team coaches, skills coaches, trainers, front office jobs for organizations, scouts, analysts, etc. which are also very well paying jobs.
I’ll tell you. Folks are like why can’t the US compete in pro tennis like Agassi & Sampras? Cause today you gotta come from wealth to rise in the ranks. So an athlete like Lebron who grew in Akron Ohio would never have the country club money to cultivate a tennis pro like Taylor Fritz, who is an heir to the May Company Department Stores.
Success in pro tennis is: Do I have the money to devote for development time on practice courts? Top coaching and influence-networking? Hotel and travel expenses for 12 months out of the year as you grind it out as a challenger?
USA top athletes are groomed into other sports. Rich kids go to tennis.
This is not quite true I think. Coming from a tennis nation if you have the talent you can get picked up by academy or something and make it to the circuit. But without money backing you you'll have to go past the Challenger/futures hurdle fast to be self sufficient but the best ones do that and they get by just fine. Plenty exemples like the Williams sisters that is possible.
That US didn't have top 10 players in men last decades is just coincedence. The absolute top is quite random, sometimes you have a bunch from a small nation like Switzerland and other huge tennis nations like France don't have a top 5 player for decades.
To linger longer on the sublevels (rank 100 to 1000) you definitely need money and connections though.
I wouldn't say many end of roster nba players were huge stars in college. Some sure but it's pretty rare for a guy who was a huge star in college to at least be a rotation player
I’ve been saying “I’m good, I promise” my whole life.
It is what it is
Ha! That’s the other one I use.
I always say “super cool” because I’m literally just always cold, so it rolls off the tongue.
I go with Living The Dream
"Hanging in there."
"Doin' okay."
"Can't complain."
"I'm alright."
Or of course, the default response, "Fine thanks, how are you?" to deflect the focus of the conversation back onto them.
It's what it's is a more dismissive way of putting it.
neat you have folks asking how you are doing.
Hey. How are you doing? I’m not being a douchecanoe either. How you doing?
oh, you know..mostly too sad for the world to be happy for myself. probably pretty strong, but weary.
The World: I’m good, I promise.
Thank you, what a nice reply.
Very good read. I don’t think i’d read the book but definitely didn’t think about this perspective from tennis players.
Not just tennis players, but anything skill-based with a ranking system. It's always a teeny percentage that can actually make good money.
what are the other sports that go by a ranking system to this level?
At this point they kind of all do, don't they? In thinking about a response, I'm having more trouble coming up with a sport that doesn't have some sort of stat-based ranking that can be correlated to pay grade. Tennis afaik specifically uses a variation of the ELO ranking system which was originally created for chess, but is now used in all sorts of sports and games ranking systems such as for soccer, hockey, american football, etc. The pay grade disparity is just an effect of capitalism very similar to how women's sports teams often make less than men's sports teams - whoever can draw more crowds will make more money since it usually comes from advertising and merchandising. Higher-ranked individuals will draw more people, so they will also earn disproportionately higher.
Golf
At least there’s more money in golf than most sports.
oooh. interesting. makes sense.
Doesn't chess?
what sport doesn't have a ranking system for its players or teams?
Fencing
This is what made the Russian match fixing of lower tier games possible. If you're losing money as a player, and someone offers you a few thousand to throw a match, how are you going to say no?
That's why you should never bet on someone who makes less money than you.
Hahah that only narrows the field to... 6 billion, for me.
Exactly. Thousands of dollars to dump a match 99.99999% of the world doesn't even know exists? Get your travel covered for a couple more tournaments? Extremely hard to say no.
Happens here in the UK with football, 99% of academy players never go on to make it pro iirc. I’m good friends with former players of my city’s academy and it’s kind of sad seeing guys who could smoke you on the football pitch get released aged 18 try their luck at another club/abroad or move on to day jobs while playing Sunday league.
I know 1 who’s played national league and 1 who’s played league 1 level, 2 players out of 30+ kids. They’re at a level where they make good enough money but are still hampered by distance to family, finding a place to stay for their contract, cost of living etc.
It’s still hard at the bottom end of the top level for athletes and it can be quite lonely too if you don’t have a good support network.
Its genuinely crazy to me how deep the football pyramids go in Europe.
This is how I feel when I watch singing show clips on YouTube. It’s like wow, that person was amazing. What a fabulous cover of that song I love. I wonder if they won the show? Nope. Who did? Never heard of them either. It’s crazy how you can be super talented and still not talented enough to make it into a career and it must be heartbreaking to be so good that your peers are becoming household names.
There’s a slight difference, though, because tennis is a straightforward competition of skill and athleticism, whereas that singer likely could have become famous if they had the right mix of attractiveness, charisma, and connections to people who have connections.
Yeah "bad" singers/musicians are top 10 superstars every year. It's such a saturated market with so much talent that it's more a case of connections/marketing in terms of "making it big".
There's an element of this in sport in terms of getting the right breaks, playing for the right teams, even just playing in specific countries etc. But at the end of the day if you keep beating the other guy(s) then you have to fuck up pretty bad to not keep progressing.
Tennis is NOT a straightforward competition of skill and athleticism only.
Income is highly dependent on sponsor deals, wildcards, starting money etc. For example Emma Raducanu despite one fluke result never performed much but gets to play center court today on a wildcard while others don't.
A player like Thiem basically stops now because it's too expensive and weirdly enough he didn't get a wildcard for last french open.
Attractiveness and marketability are a thing. Emma has it, Dominic did not.
“I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair.”
Thank you, was searching for an "Infinite Jest" reference.
His book is great. Highly recommend it. Really shows how tough tennis is, if you're not from an established tennis nation, with the resources to back you.
Funny that this came out right after Challengers, which is a movie where one of the deuteragonists is a top tennis player and super rich despite being more-or-less only marginally better than the other deuteragonist who is basically living out of his car.
Spoilers:
>! I never got that impression unless I missed something. He came from a rich background but where does it indicate he’s actually doing well as an adult? Like he had a lot of support from his parents as a kid but it looked like at the point he was an adult that he was just barely scraping by off challengers tournament winnings. !<
This is a good read for sure and strikingly true. I played in the Pacific Northwest in the late 90s and was ranked 1/2/3 in 18s. Went to a tennis academy and briefly tried to go on tour. Couldn’t hang at all. The top top guys were funded by the USTA and the rest of us got parental funding, then went to college and now everyone I know from then has normal jobs. Some are pros at local clubs, but most don’t play at all anymore.
“Bad” tennis coaches charge $200 /hr in my area. Why would anyone one be stupid enough to scrap for prize money when there is all that dough teeing up balls to old rich farts?
Because you believe you'll make it to the top, and feel if you don't try your hardest, you'll hate yourself for the rest of your life.
I'm sure that's where a lot of them end up. But when you're still in your 20's, you're still holding on to the dream that you can make that push and get into the ATP.
Yeah I worked for the ATP for quite some time. The schedule is insane. We profiled a lot of those guys grinding their way through the Challenger circuit. I remember this tournament in Houston, 35 degrees in November and 1/2 the competitors had their arms falling off but ya needed to grind it out for the points. Get injured? 6 weeks off to rehab and they sink deeper into the hole.
Pro tennis is, above all skill and physical resiliency.
Sheesh it sounds pretty grim. Though it also seems that it could be a much more enjoyable pursuit if the players had more of a culture of cooperation and camaraderie. The idea of travelling to all of these far-flung places, playing tennis with friends sounds like a dream.
This hits home for me. I was never a professional tennis player but I have similar in a few situations. But I at least came out with one friend.
I feel u.
Professional athletes are basically entertainers. I wonder if these lower-level pro players could open up some kind of tennis bar? You can have a drink and watch them play tennis, or even pay extra and play a match against them yourself. Like a piano bar but sports!
I’d highly recommend his book, he’s a great interviewee as well if you get a chance to hear him. Really eye opening perspective given with humour
No pressure and eating
Thought this was Steve Carell
The Challenger and futures tour need a complete revamp I think.
Players can barely sustain a career from this level because the costs of travel, coach, fysio and gear just outdo the income. Especially if you're from a non tennis nation because it's harder to get good training, further travel to tournaments and you don't get wildcards into the more lucrative tournaments. Tennis is highly unfair at the moment.
Also all these challenger and futures barely make profit. They have low attendence, just watch any of a bunch of YouTubers that journal their life trying to make it to the top.
I think they should change the form of play. Knockout tournaments everywhere is a stupid system, it's bad for planning and everything.
Create a competition where players compete for clubs in a team. This could create more stable revenue for players and organizers. Players can get contracts and have easy access to training, accomodation, travel and fysio through a team. For attendance it's probably better too if players support teams/clubs.
Even at low level you see this, for example in the Netherlands club competition tennis FAR outweighs tournaments in popularity. Even if tennis is mostly an individual sport (except doubles which most don't focus on) teamplay is more popular.
Tl;dr Replace futures/challengers with a teambased competition
It’s really the same across all sports. I played AAU basketball in the northeast at the highest level (team finished top 3 in super regionals and top 8 in nationals), and outside of 1-2 games at nationals, I didn’t play against a single player who made it to high level D1 college, let alone the NBA. Playing a tournament every weekend meant seeing 40-60 players a week for 4-5 months a year, and out of those top 1000 players in the northeast, not ONE made it. I’m sure it’s different in California, Texas, and the southeast though.
Ski racing is a great example of this. IYKYK
Read David Foster Wallace if you’re interested in existential struggle through the lens of semi professional tennis
Narcissist parents.
1 in 8 men think they could win a point in a tennis match against peak Serena Williams.
A single point? That's not outrageous to think. One shank winner or net cord dribble and you get your point. Also, even world class tennis players make unforced errors.
I'm not delusional enough to think I could get a game off her, but one single point? Sure.
And they would be right. Can you provide a single instance (without googling) when anyone won a match without losing a point? Without googling, how often do you think that happens?
And 99.999% of the 1 in 8 would be wrong.
Can't seem to find his book available in the US. A shame as I would have loved to have read more =/
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