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.
> But maybe in a few years, she'll be the coach for someone in the next generation.
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.
This seems very unlikely to me given the propensity of finance firm to hire even college athletes never mind people who got to be in the top one or 200 of their sport in the world. Anyone who is capable of pushing the work in day after day to get a good at some thing that doesn’t very well like sport is capable of putting enormous amount of work day after day to get good at something that does pay well. Most famously jocks are good at sales. Athletes are no fools. Often of the top of my head Michael Jordan has had a very successful career as an investor after the end of his sporting career. Michelle Debruin, and Irish Olympic gold medallist in swimming, went on to become a Barrister, a trial lawyer in the American parlance. The people who stay in Borsh are staying in sports because they really really love i,t not because they’re not capable of making more money in other ways.
Nobody decides to pursue their pro sports dream out of pragmatism or a career. They do it because its their calling and they don't care about the odds. They know that a fractional percentage will achieve the highest highs, and they go forth anyway.
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.
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.
My young son is really getting into tennis and I grew up playing as well so I’m excited.
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.
I hold the unpopular opinion that serious child sports are child labour, and parents should be punished as such. The same goes for chess, dancing, acting or any other such pursuit.
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.
Maybe even if you don't make it, you'd look back fondly on your time as a competitor as a formative period. I'm sure you'd gain lots of skills by having such discipline and rigor.
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.
Something I grapple with as someone who washed out of the classical music pipeline and recreationally participate in an Olympic sport: if my future child gets identified as Talented, will I let them go down the Path? Because What-If they’re actually world-dominating talent? Will it be right of me to derail that in the name of risk-adversity?
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.
>Pros are born with 80-95% of the raw ability and the rest is training.
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.
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.
Not to mention that in many sports, you can literally be a world champion level and just barely affording to cover the necessary costs (best equipment, long training camps abroad etc.) to compete at the highest level.
In my country we have olympic medalists in kayaking, rowing etc. and they are nowhere close to making any money out of it.
My cousin won a bronze medal in a non-prestigious event in 2004, and according to him there are a ton of people who love hiring Olympic level athletes, because they believe that they have the personality to strive to win.
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.
> In my country we have olympic medalists in kayaking, rowing etc. and they are nowhere close to making any money out of it.
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
Is there any reason to expect it should be otherwise? Competing in sports is a very selfish thing to do, and produces no benefit for anyone else unless you’re good enough to be entertaining to watch, so why should anyone expect to make money doing it? You’re adding no value to society.
> 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.
Just like startups innit? Fail quick or win big. But the worst is muddling along. You might be a figma you might be nobody. Nothing to do but keep going. M
I don't think people are putting this in proper perspective. Top 2000 in the whole world? There are millions of smart and athletic tennis players.
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.
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.
It could be worse, you could have ability and obsessive parents.
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.
In my opinion, from spending many hours playing with former D1 players, these guys come out of those top tier programs screwed for life.
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.
The discipline that competitive sports instills in a person still translates into other areas of their life. My athletic career hit a dead end too, but staying with a sport and grinding out progress over the years taught me something that I still use in my forties.
Thin boned and uncoordinated bodies can do well in road cycling and distance running. If you're obsessive enough to execute the right workouts every day then you can get pretty good, although only a tiny number of people make a living from those sports.
Thin boned and uncoordinated? Rock climbing is your sport! Go to a local gym and try it for a few months and you might find yourself getting really good really fast
> 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.
This is reflection of our innate tendency to fit ourselves in an hierarchy and judge others by their perceived position in that hierarchy. The stronger someone attaches their self worth to their place in this hierarchy (ranking for tennis players, job title in corporate setting etc), the stronger their behaviour towards others will be driven by it.
This may be true, but I'd also argue that distinguishing power solely derived from hierarchy (nepotism) and everything else can be difficult.
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.
At a company I worked for years ago, I was the "onboarding buddy" for a new hire. My job was to welcome him and help him learn the ropes.
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!"
Maybe im missing something but what is so strange about that? Once you stopped training them and thanked you, what else are they supposed to thank you for everyday?
> what else are they supposed to thank you for everyday
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.
If I ignore you or anyone, please instead assume it’s because interacting with you or anyone is very exhausting. I can and will be polite and full of smiles as you train me, but that’s by far the hardest part of my day.
Hah! Same experience with some not even junior traders when I worked in finance in Sydney. As soon as they graduated to junior trader I was shit to them. Only 80% of them but was instructive.
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.
There’s a really fun YouTube series where a virtually no name ex-NBA player challenges top amateurs to 1 on 1. It’s not even close. Brian Scalabrine is his name and his famous quote is “I’m way closer to Lebron than you are to me.”
The dedication to become a top .0001% athlete is absolutely nuts and beyond that is uncomprehendable.
I believe the origin of Scalabrines channel was from people who absolutely grilled his performance while he was pro. He came out and said "If you think I suck so much, come 1v1 me." He then promptly stomped his detractors on the court
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.
Yeah that series is great. And you can tell sometimes he'll play against someone who has a good move or something that works for about 12 seconds before he adjusts/remembers how to deal with it.
I felt slightly unhinged when I instinctively control F'd for "infinite" upon seeing this headline for no particular reason, glad to find this comment.
> 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.
Nope, this isn’t Downton Abbey. The further you go in competitive tennis, the tighter the community gets. Also, playing tennis and stringing rackets are two distinct skillsets. For elite players the strings are just as crucial as the racket itself. Check out this interview with the stringer who traveled the globe with Federer for 15 years, ensuring he had nine freshly strung rackets for each match.
Readit News
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.
So its like a slow-burning pyramid scheme powered by youthful optimism?
> 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.
Deleted Comment
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.
Deleted Comment
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
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sRSqSupzyM