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.
A quick search will show you the shockingly high bankruptcy rates for former pro athletes. Plus, most of them do not finish uni and have few marketable skills after their short career ends.
ESPN's 30-for-30 episode "Broke" is a great watch. It does seem though that newer generation athletes are a bit better educated in that matter since they're better connected online, but that might just be anecdotal.
> Those bankruptcy statistics might be biased given how poorly paid athletes are, thus tgey might be a consequence of their past and not their present.
You're generalizing quite a bit here. The other common story for those in the team sports I've heard is that a ton of them have poor financial education and got fleeced by money managers. Combo that with poor job prospects and injuries from the sport itself that you've to pay to treat...
> You can have jobs without a degree. Important and fullfilling jobs too.
For sure, I'm someone like that. But I started at 20 to get into my field. My first job was laughably badly paid, but I got a foot in the door.
These athletes usually end their career at around 35. An age where you already have a family or plan to get it soon, meaning you have financial obligations, and it's not easy to completely switch the career tracks. Many will manage to do it, but many will rather choose the safe way of staying in the sport, where they already have a resume, knowledge, customer base.
To be clear, in the US, when people say pro-athlete, they mostly means NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB. (Yes, tennis counts also, but leave that aside for a moment.)
I Googled for minimum contracts in those four leagues:
MLB is shockingly low, but it might be explained by the farm leagues. (I don't know more details.) I doubt anyone who sees regular play in the MLB is making so little.
I know someone who went through this. dreams followed. Pursued a sport through college, didn't quite make pro. afterwards life languished and didn't quite amount to much.
I think people might need to have a plan b, but honestly I don't know very many people who do. People are good at doing what defines them, not hedging.
No. Yet, if you're cynical enough everything is a pyramid scheme. And, then maybe you're able to see that the economic systems themselves are full on that unsustainable growth (if, for example, you start looking into how the 'natural resources' are exploited to be centralized in important cities/ countries yet the environmental costs are never paid by the latter and so on...)
Nothing like pyramid scheme because what sustain the “scheme” overall is public interest, generate experiences that people pay money for and companies are willing to sponsor. It’s not the new young players that input all the money in the industry.
Even in the case of very young players that are paying to play, it’s the parents money, so not exactly “youthful optimism” that powers it.
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.
Federer was 27 when he won his first French open. His first slam was Wimbledon which he won when he was 21. You are thinking of Nadal who won his first French open when he was 18. Also there have been players who won their first slam much later in their careers. Schiavone for example reached her first slam final and won it when she was almost 30.
Programming is a non-scalable career (in the Talebian sense[1]), like being a lawyer or doctor. The relationship in earnings vs success is much closer to linear, with the most successful programmers getting only about 10x (100x if we'rereally generous, but probably more like 2-4x on average) more than the least.
In contrast pro sports are a scalable career, where incomes can scale separately from effort, similar to movie stars, authors and musicians. The relationship is an exponential with the very best earning the lion share of the income of the entire industry, earning literally millions of times more than those at the bottom of the industry.
Given a certain amount of effort invested in your career so far, if you know you're middle of the road of a scalable career, and it's becoming less and less likely that you'll hit the top 1 percentile, then I would think that the likelihood that you should perhaps look to change career should be much higher than if you were middle of the road in a non scalable career.
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.
You don’t need discipline and rigor for the fun parts, and you won’t get them there either. You develop them through the grind and the sacrifice, which may or may not be something you’ll want your child to endure.
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.
> 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.
1) You've got it backward. If that hadn't been true, you'd never have heard about them.
You could drop the Williams sisters in practically ANY power sport given their size and build (Venus is REALLY BIG for a woman--she's 6' 1" and could likely play in the WNBA--Serena isn't exactly tiny--she's 5' 9"--that puts them at 3 and 2 standard deviations out, repectively) and they would dominate very quickly.
If the Williams sisters played basketball or soccer, for example, they'd be a hugely dominant force there, instead.
2) Training did a big shift right about the 1990s when people like the Williams sisters were coming up--especially for female training.
Navratilova was really the first female tennis player to adopt more scientific power training and reap the benefits. The players in the next generation (which includes the Williams sisters) that were steeped in that idea and put it into practice did very well in a LOT of different sports. They also easily blew through competitors who didn't do that--and at that point in the 1990s there were still a lot who didn't.
Serena and Venus were clearly phenomenal pure athletes. Serena is arguably the strongest womens player ever.
The Williams dad basically coached Venus and Serena. Think about it, he's not even a professional coach. Think about all the thousands of privileged tennis players that get unlimited professional coaching, facilities, Boletteri academy, etc.
I will grant you that tennis is a sport where overwhelming athleticism is not the primary attribute. But right after hand-eye coordination comes athleticism, and after that is top-tier endurance.
There is no shortage of athletes in high-revenue sports that will literally run through walls (see: rugby, american football) to succeed. And the vast majority of them don't. Look at Division I college sports: full of totally dedicated elite athletes receiving top level coaching. How many of them move onto the lower tiers of pro tennis?
Don't be fooled by the lottery winners / survivor bias of the top players. Yes they worked hard to get where they were. Yes they may work harder or smarter than some of their near-peers with equally flaggergasting natural talents. Yes it fits into a popular American narrative of hard work == success.
But look at Nick Krygios. I don't follow the guy's training, but it's pretty clear that he is as apathetic a top player as there is. Every tennis observer knows he has the physical gifts of an all-time great, almost naturally given.
Donovan Bailey was a Canadian sprinter that won the 100m in the Olympics in the 90s (no, not the steroid guy Ben Johnson). He was basically not training and goofing off a year before the Olympics and someone finally got through to him to actually train for it and got him focused, and boom a year later he was Olympic champ in the most selective, widely contested, pure athletic event in existence.
A lot of my frustration with the youth coaching sports pipeline is that they tell the parents to focus on one sport to exclusion. There is a racket where the high school teams will only have players coached by the coach in the offseason, "paid his dues".
So kids don't get a wide variety of sports exposure and don't have fun. Which is dumb. Sure there are these youth sports coach vampires making a buck off of the hopes and dreams of the parents, but it comes down to the idiot parents not realizing how things really work.
>Serena and Venus were clearly phenomenal pure athletes
I don't think it's helpful to assert true the point that's trying to proven. The point is Richard Williams made a decision before it could possible be known that both daughters just happened to be pure phenomenal athletes at that young an age for that specific sport. There is no evidence that this is not s case of nuture overcoming nature since the absence of similar successes could just as easily be chalked up to shitty coaching of what were incredibly talented youths who were more pure athletes than either of the Willams sisters instead of an indictment of the lack of god given talent those other failed youths originally possessed.
>But look at Nick Krygios. I don't follow the guy's training, but it's pretty clear that he is as apathetic a top player as there is.
The point of contention is not whether naturally talented athletes can become pro with minimal effort, which I think hardly anyone would disagree with in theory. The contested point is whether the parent is condemning their children to failure if they do not rack up successes at a very young age.
There was a piece a while back ago attributing the success of notable famous people like Einstein to the presence of all consuming private tutors, where the tutor in question was either a very close family friend, a family member, or a relative. These people just didn't quit when other tutors with less skin in the game would. How do we know 50% natural talent is not enough and the rest cannot be overcome by nuture, and that it has to be 90% natural talent from the get go?
I agree that regardless of success such a life might be subpar. But whether a parent should subject their kid to such a life is a related but a separate issue to the question of their potential success.
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
Countries like the USA have a system with slightly less pretense. If you're part of the Olympic program you basically get paid a small living wage (but, importantly, all your expenses are paid for: food, medical care equipment, etc) to train full time.
The benefit of the soldier/police/... system is that you get education for another job on the side, so if your career breaks down for whatever reason you got a simpler transition into a "normal" job.
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.
I disagree that the low ranking athletes don't provide value to society. They are the motivation for the people at the top to continue to improve. The more people are nipping at the feet of the top athletes, the more they realise they increase their game. That's without mentioning that in some sports, a lot of people enjoy watching the lower level performers because they can more easily relate to them.
These sports in general provide value in the sense that many people find them worth paying for. That's the definition of value.
Now, it's true that they're not generally excited to see the #503rd ranked player in the world play the #489th ranked player. But, the top 50 players in the world were once ranked at the bottom. They played their way up.
In other words, how would you know who are the best players in the world unless you have a large pool of professional players?
Like many, I have a lot of issues with the way tennis rankings are calculated and the way prize money is distributed. You need those lower ranked players and therefore they should be paid more.
Also want to point out that top 500 ranked individuals in individual sports represent 99.99 percentile skill level against the entire pool of people playing that sport recreationally. It’s just that they’re playing against 99.99999% percentile skill level athletes.
But make no mistake D1 and Pro-Circuit players are, at the end of the day, still very good.
> They are the motivation for the people at the top to continue to improve.
That is improving at something that is completely useless still. It is not even more interesting to watch than, say, 20 years ago. That progress does not help anyone.
If you are better at making music, your music is better to listen. If everyone is producing better movies, we all watch better movies.
It is not the same with sport. You being 0.05s faster swimmer does not make swimming competition more fun to watch. Same with skiing or whatever. And pretty often, the performance improvements make the sport more boring to watch due to predictable optimal tactic.
The expectation is because sports are glamorized in media and pop culture, and people don't want to admit that talent is mostly genetic, and even the mental strength to practice every day is mostly genetic
What definition of "value" are you working with here?
An athlete creates something that many people do happily pay for, directly or indirectly. That is value.
Not everybody considers it worth paying for, obviously. But that's not the criteria for "value." I mean, there are a lot of things other people pay for that I don't care about.
Are there many people happily paying for what athletes produces? Because it does not seem to work that way economically. There are very few people on top who earn and massively more of those who are in financial loss. And a lot of money goes from governments and own families.
Because it does not seem to work that
way economically. There are very few people
on top who earn and massively more of those
who are in financial loss.
Well, there's two different questions there: "is there a lot of money coming in, enough to pay everybody very well?" and "are they distributing it equitably enough?"
For many sports, the answers are "yes" and "probably not."
Athletics is experimentation on human abilities and how to train them in various ways… instead of pubmed, your experiment results are published on the scoreboard.
Still selfish, albeit harmlessly so when only a voluntary hobby. Sadly some kids get a lot of family and peer pressure, regardless of their own internal motivation or lack thereof.
> 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?
At some point you can't say hi to everyone, which is very normal. I walk by a hundred coworkers a day, and don't greet all of them, it isn't anything personal if I don't.
That said, you better believe I Do take the extra 5 seconds to say hi to my bosses when I pass them.
Yes, but if you had a close interaction with one of those hundreds 2 days ago and were very thankful back then - then it is willfully ignoring the lowly peasant, to show them and everyone else, they are now higher in the hierachy.
I think people are projecting a lot of class stuff onto this which is besides the point.
I still think it is completely normal to figure out who your close coworkers are and settle into a group after a few days.
I think it is more about organizational structure and immediacy than anything else, unless someone is actively rejecting a greeting.
I work in a department of 100, and have met just about everyone. It would be extremely weird, not to mention distracting to say high to everyone when I walk to my desk. I don't think I am an outlier in that I prioritize greeting in this setting. Yes, that means I'm probably not going to single out some intern that I worked with for a couple days.
I don't think that makes me a psychopath, and it doesn't mean I wouldn't chat with them in an elevator or some similar 1:1 circumstance.
> I'm pretty sure nobody cares about receiving a smile unless they're the socially awkward ones or are there for the wrong reasons (narcissists).
Are you autistic?
The vast majority of people appreciate a little eye contact and a smile which is literally the least you can do to acknowledge that they're human and not a piece of furniture.
Would you feel appreciated by a coworker who does sloppy work that you have to pick up slack for, yet smiles at you every morning? Didn't think so. It would likely make it worse in some ways, wouldn't it? You might feel pity and guilt, not happiness.
But I think most would still try to work with them to improve in good faith because that's work. The smile is irrelevant. The happiness comes when you've helped train them up. Then the smile actually means something.
On the flip side, would you feel appreciated or intimidated by a coworker who smiles at you yet carries all that soft power of deep knowledge and skills nobody else at that workplace has?
Smiles can mean a lot more than shallow acknowledgement especially in the workplace. At a social gathering though, sure the smile is just friendly.
When I walk to my working area, I see maybe 10 people and if they look at me I nod and they nod back or maybe say hi if they are closer with me.
I'm not greeting a worker, I'm greeting a human being.
> Would you feel appreciated by a coworker who does sloppy work that you have to pick up slack for, yet smiles at you every morning? Didn't think so. It would likely make it worse in some ways, wouldn't it? You might feel pity and guilt, not happiness.
>But I think most would still try to work with them to improve in good faith because that's work. The smile is irrelevant.
The OP mentioned walking past a hundred peoples' desks. Do you really need to feel appreciated by a hundred random coworkers to act like a decent human being?
> Do you really need to feel appreciated by a hundred random coworkers to act like a decent human being?
No... ? Where did you get this impression?
Anyway I think we're approaching a learning moment in work culture differences.
Anyone who does heads down work expresses appreciation through competence and willingness to help. When you're in a tight spot and need a solution, getting that help is better than all the smiles in the world. That's teamwork. You can genuinely smile after. I'm not against smiles. I'm just saying they don't mean anything in and of themselves.
Maybe you rubbed a raw nerve because you made me think of those cheesy appreciation e-cards I remember from a previous job a while back. That's about as soulless as it gets.
Smiling usually doesn't, and shouldn't, get you anywhere.
Not really, you're going to meet a whole heap of people in your first few days. It's pretty overwhelming! They person who ran you through some software but otherwise isn't a day-to-day contact isn't going to stick in your head for long!
This doesn't strike me as wrong, but does surprise me. I have had friendly relations with the front desk at most of my positions. And we literally didn't know each other's names. Still nice when they notice a dropped thing of mine. And I didn't get too many chances to help them. Did where I could. And a smile and general conversation is not exactly easy, but you don't get good at things without practice.
Heck, janitorial staff should get more than ignored.
Is it? In the US the majority of my coworkers just drop in (virtually or not) to ask questions without saying hi (even at the start of a sentence containing the question). That's not true for other countries.
sure, which is pretty normal, given the real world power dynamics that organizational structures represent. Of course people will go out of their way to play nice with the people to set their pay and promotion.
> 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.
Thank you for your service to the English language. This tremendous faux pas is so easy to correct just by thinking for a single second the basic logic of what is being said, and yet so many people continue making the mistake. Even worse, sometimes people justify it with a wacky "I care so little that I could care less, but I won't, that's how little I care" explanation.
It started as a sarcastic statement not a mistake, but it’s been used so often it’s turning into an idium.
Languages are full of phrases that get used so often the original meaning gets lost organs others that are heading that way. Raining cats and Dogs is ancient and nobody is quite sure where it came from, but as long as people understand intent there’s no need for to add up correctly.
Sure, but there’s quite a bit of this stuff. Contronyms will often allow identical phrases with opposite meanings. Left can mean to leave or to remain. Dust can mean to add a fine power to something or to remove it by dusting. Sanction, Bolt, etc there’s quite a few words that mean the opposite or something close to it.
Words with opposite meanings can end up converging. ‘That’s cool’ and ‘that’s hot’ sometimes have the exact same meaning depending on context.
Well I was certainly not expecting to come back and find a large comment thread about _this_ part of my comment. The funny thing is I know the proper usage, I was simply typing fast and rephrased my sentence structure a couple times so the "not" got lost in edits. Keep up the good fight though.
Sure, that seems very normal too. I imagine you still wouldn't say hi to each person when you walk through a trading floor with maybe a hundred people each day.
> Seems like sociopathic behavior to me, which these professions tend to attract.
given how cheap is to say hello, and maybe get some advantage from this in the future, this is not very smart sociopathic behavior.
But this maybe be result of culture differences: some people grew up in culture where work is work(with all protocols, like saying hello to coworker), and personal life (interhuman behaviour) is something separate.
These people spend pretty much all their time in work. They don't have personal lifes separated from work. Even if they have partner, it is someone they see 30 min a day or something like that.
True, if I was a really smart sociopath and a good actor I'd just mask and act like I'm normal so I could extract friendship and true love from people by giving them the same
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.
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.
Agassi is a far outlier though. I'm not saying that it's not a lonely road, but I remember reading about his dad being a compulsive gambler and him having to play a match for their house when he was 12-14 years old. Think about what it's like having to grow up and go through something like that -- how would you be able to relate to other players who are close to you in rankings? Either way kudos to him for taking that on.
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?
People playing tennis professionally aren't simply trying it out. The development of a tennis professional is probably most similar to someone who has been bred to become a classical musician. Those that play tennis or classical music professionally are never just trying something out, but have been fully immersed since childhood, to the point where their entire life revolves around playing. To give it up, would be to give up the one thing that their entire life has revolved around since childhood.
What I'm trying to explain is that for the top level juniors who become pros, it is not a hobby or "thing", it is their entire universe. Top junior players that expect to become pros are already touring the world when they are in their mid-teens. Their entire world is their parents, their coach, their peers at their tennis academy, and the players they see at tournaments. They are living and breathing it, and little else. The top junior players often do not participate in regular high schooling and the promising ones that go pro young, don't go to university at all. Almost none of the top pros even today have ever gone to university. The players that do make it to successful careers in the top 100, don't make it with the attitude of being half in with a backup plan. They make it with the idea that tennis is their entire life and purpose.
Spot on. I would just add that, exactly for the reasons you describe, going to a four year US university and then turning pro is becoming a lot more common. Off the top of my head I can name a half dozen guys in the top 100 who spent at least a few years playing D1 tennis.
Problem with these players is that it is kinda happening. Not properly, but they are not entirely failing... This is the most dangerous spot to be, you are not there yet, but you can reasonable think you can get there. These players get to play at least the early rounds. You are ever so slightly alternatively above and below the water...
Reasonably, maybe, but it means that the person needs to rejects themself. At this level of immersion sport/music becomes the part of the person, their definition (implicit or explicit) contains words "music" or "sport". It is still possible to throw it away and start again, but it is really difficult psychologically, and probably in other aspects too: they don't know how to be someone who is not a musician or an athlete.
I think that once you've become, ex., the number 1 tennis player in a country it's tough to retrain, both literally and psychologically. Your whole life, and likely your self-worth, are highly enmeshed with the sport. Accepting that it's not going to work out is going to be straight up painful, psychologically, not to mention that you probably are pretty short on other qualifications.
It is exactly this. Tennis has been the focal point of the entire life of these players. I saw this even in the juniors, no matter the success of the players. For those that were really involved in the sport, their entire life revolved around it, to the point where it became part of their identity. Young competitive players will spend most of their available time outside of school to play, that being multiple hours a day, seven days a week, year-round. To stop playing, is not just to make an easy pivot like the guy you responded to thinks it is, but is more like giving up on a religion that you've devoted your entire life and being to.
But if you are the number 1 tennis player in your country in some objective sense, can’t you build a coaching career out of that?
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.
Of course you could. The “problem” is that the psychology of these players is not remotely in the same realm as yours or mine. “Reasonableness” is not the criterion that people this driven measure themselves by.
I'd say from my limited vantage point that it looks like it's only partially social pressure. The media glamourizing sports stars I'd say is the root-cause. This doesn't just apply to tennis - it applies to every sport. Look at what Jordan did to the NBA and how many kids wanted to be in his shoes growing up -- they don't realize what comes with the 'gift' though may not be glamorous or worth the price you pay. You mostly see the very rich life-style and fan-worship -- behind the scenes most people don't realize the hard work and pain and the pressure some of these athletes have to experience in order to get there. On another note - if anyone wants a great example of this here's a great read (called Federer as a Religious Experience and it's still my favorite piece of sport-writing after 15+ years): https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...
At a guess, is it to become a tennis coach/pro later on? Like you do this in your 20s then coach at a private high school so they can say they have the former #129th ranked tennis player in the world.
My previous coach was somewhere in the top 200 at some point. He wasn't very good at teaching tennis... My current one is a long term career tennis teacher with a much lower ranking, but he's very good at teaching.
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
This is a great question and I'll try to answer it.
Like, after a few years of trying it’s got to be obvious.
It took Roger Federer a few years on the pro tour to break into the top 100.
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.
Here’s the thing. To become a top athlete/Classical Musician requires a literal lifetime of training. Unless you are an extreme outlier of latent prodigal talent, you must start as soon as humanly possible.
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.
> Is the low key story that these are mostly just old money children in a limbo of their parents’ whims and lifelines?
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 more so meant just where are they getting the money to do this? Because the article sure seemed to suggest he was making far less than minimum wage considering his training time and tourney earnings.
When you're young and fit, your expenses are quite low. You can live out of a van, and as long as you have enough for food and have a practice partner, you can keep trying to make it as a player.
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).
Any of those players can go on to make excellent hourly offering lessons to adults and wealthy children. Its a poor slog now but that doesn't mean the experience has no value they could get from it.
Because when you aim for the moon -- even if you miss, you will still be a success (in my mind). I would rather live life as a failed scientist trying to reach a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding or following what I feel is my passion -- even if my odds of reaching what I want to reach may be 0.001 percent, at least striving to reach that point is a great adventure and the pain that comes with it is something worth it and there's no shame in that. More people I think should try it.
Precisely why professional sports (and entertainment) is not for the odds calculating average person. It is for a different breed of humans. In a literal sense, their genetic stock is different.
Or surviving as a book author, or making it as an actor/actress in Hollywood, or ... - they simply have a dream and it is quite hard to find the right timing for giving up such dreams.
Succeeding as an author, actor, or tennis player is a much greater challenge than starting a company. There are millions and millions of companies succeeding well enough to keep their owners afloat. The chances for creative careers and professional sports, meanwhile, are abysmal.
I don’t think they’re independent events. Bayesian priors would say that if you have five failed businesses then your chances of being successful on number 6 are probably less than 60%
Well, it’s much more independent than being a pro athlete. By design you only have one to two chances to go pro at a sport. You can’t go back in time to your prime playing age, you can’t go back in time to train at a different sport during your youth.
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.
The supply outstrips the demand. The number of NFL teams is tightly controlled to extract the most amount of money from its consumers. More teams, less money for each owner and players but a higher % of college football players having a shot at a career.
You can be "less risky" than a restaurant while still having dismal chances of success though. Nobody who starts a business expects that it'll be bankrupt within a few years, yet statistically some 90% are. The worst cases are when the company manages along for years and then still goes under. I was contracting for a 10 year old company of ~30 people last year and they just had to fire 20 of those and will still almost certainly go bankrupt. They weren't in a business you'd call "risky" either.
> 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.
>I'm sure Futures events are isolating and lonely, but it seems the author was quick to cast judgment on the players who prioritized socializing over winning at all costs.
I'm not so sure. These guys don't earn jack shit, even if they win small Futures/Challengers. Taxes, equipment, travel, etc.. adds up quickly. Forget about coaching at that level.
Not the right environment to go party with someone one night and then have to beat them the next day in order to put food on the table.
Keep in mind that at this level, tennis is fucking insanely hard. A few guys from my high school tried that level (they all played D1 at top schools, a few were top 20 USTA as juniors, one made top 3 ITF and was highly ranked within the college game) and none of them fared well.
These (challengers/futures level players) aren't some random scrubs - these are often times guys who either played top college ball, or guys who were top 100 ITF juniors (or top player in their country/region) who never had the game to get to the next level, or guys who were just not quite good enough to make top 100 ATP and need to grind every day to get auto entry to qualies at majors or ATP Masters events.
> These guys don't earn jack shit, even if they win small Futures/Challengers. Taxes, equipment, travel, etc.. adds up quickly. Forget about coaching at that level.
100% agree on this.
I do not know in particular with Tennis but the same is true in MMA also. When I used to do blogging/reporting about MMA I talked with a prominent fighter about the economics of being an UFC fighter.
In a nutshell:He was about to participate of an card event [1] and in case of victory he would take home USD 22-24K and he explained that whole preparation would be USD 29-32K.
The costs were:
- Flights (himself and his team with 2 trainers)
- Sparring (if you need to do the camp in USA, probably we will have at least 3 sparring partners)
- Special Medicine/Supplement (since the Nevada State Athletic Commission had some specific requirements in terms of anti-doping he could not have all normal supplements/medicine)
- His agent
- Pre-Camp / Camp (For instance if you're grappler and you will face a striker you will need to adjust your training accordingly)
- Post-Fight doctors (general scanning and treatment in case of some severe injury)
After that I was so shocked about how that economics did not make any sense, and he explained to me that the whole thing in UFC is just to build his brand and bring more students to his gym, and prepare his own gym for camp to other fighters.
I have absolute respect for the rest of 99% in any sport because its a very tough business and its very different from what we see in TV.
Indeed. By definition, very few aspiring players break through to be among the very top players. But I bet some of those socializing players at least came away from their journey with a little less loneliness and more lasting friendships.
Yup, on reading the second part I immediately went "this guy is an introvert". Nothing wrong with that, of course, and I'm exactly like that on work trips and conferences, bolting to my hotel room immediately after the day's work is done. But I don't really buy the "no professional tennis player has any friends" message he's trying to push.
the trouble is not only was he an introvert, but he did not seem to have any solitary hobbies, not even reading. i'm an introvert too, but i cannot imagine sitting in a hotel room and being desperate for something to do to pass the time to the extent that i would just sleep late.
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.
You can be top 100 in Sweden and be a professional making good money. Being top 100 in Sweden is actually achievable. But in tennis you have top 128 in the world.
I don't think that's true these days, even defenders and the like need to perform very well for a team to be successful. There's a high level of performance and skill throughout the entire teams.
But there are simply more spots and to be top 128 in tennis is almost impossible.
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.
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.
I think that this applies to most human endeavours, not just sport.
I used to produce electronic music on my own, as a side gig; it felt very solitary and I am thankful to be now part of a band where I can interact with other musicians who became also good friends; money-wise it is worse but it's not my main income so I'm fine with that.
As a software developer, I have worked for a few years as a solo freelancer, it felt in some ways like what the author describes in the OP, moving to a "traditional" 9-to-5 dev job actually felt like a breath of fresh air, despite all the shortcomings of that type of job.
I'm in integrated circuit design and one of the most rewarding aspects is brainstorming with coworkers on a white board. When someone asks a question about a bug in the flow and you have the answer it feels good to help and vice versa when someone else helps you. Sometimes the job sucks when the deadlines are approaching so its nice to be able to complain about the stress with coworkers while getting a beer. In many ways a good team at work is similar to a sports team at least from what I remember in school.
Yes I agree, I especially resonate with what you said about brainstorming, in almost every job I have been, I have found some people who ended up becoming my "brainstorming buddies", having such coworkers around is to me an incredibly important factor, so much so that it can influence my choices re: staying at a company vs going somewhere else.
> I used to produce electronic music on my own, as a side gig; it felt very solitary and I am thankful to be now part of a band where I can interact with other musicians who became also good friends
I've gone both directions. Made electronic music by myself. Then started a couple of bands in my 20s. Those ended when I had kids and moved across the country. Then I got back into making electronic music by myself in my 40s.
I miss the cameraderie of being in a band dearly. But at the same time, the logistics are so much easier making electronic music on my own. I can just noodle on it whenever I get a spare minute. There's something lonely about the resulting music always being exactly what I could come up with, but there's also something rewarding about being able to really dig in to my own weird tastes and preferences without having to compromise with bandmates. I'm sure it would be very hard to find someone else who wanted to make electronic music close enough to what I'm into right now to be worth collaborating.
That's interesting, we have gone through almost opposite journeys. I was in bands as a teen and in my early 20s, solo electronic in my late 20's and then again in my mid 30's, finally back to being in a band in my 40's.
I agree with your sentiment relative to being free from compromise, in my previous comment I should have added that there are shortcomings to being in a band and the struggle over creative direction is the biggest one IMHO. At least over the years I have gotten better at quickly working out whether or not a band is for me, and if it's not I can get out of it before making too many commitments. As opposed to my teens where I kept playing, for a long time, in bands I didn't like just because my mates where there.
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.
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.
I would bet most of the money comes from endorsing and peddling selling pieces of plastic for $249, when they cost $10 to make in China, not from actual tournament winnings.
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 much. I wasn't suggesting it was a satisfying amount at all. But in terms of personal achievement, he should feel proud of qualifying for the grand slams and playing on the big stage, even if that moment was short-lived.
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.
A family acquaintance of mine was a consultant with an interesting work/life balance:
- He had no permanent physical residence aka he didn't own a house or rent an apartment (he did have a PO Box in a city just for a legal address)
- Everything he owned was in 4 suitcases
- Other than scheduled PTO, the firm decided where he would go for consulting projects (often on short notice) which could be anywhere in the world
- When he DID have PTO, the firm would pay for ANYTHING he wanted to do. Rent a speedboat? Check! Fly him to Asia to see a friend? Check!
He had a girlfriend (who I was friends with and how I knew him) so I don't think he was totally isolated. That being said, must be tough to put down roots in that situation.
I understand that the actual playing the matches is very isolating too: there may be a crowd of people watching the 2 players but it's just them on the court battling it out. The intensity of the battle and its psychological components probably adds to the isolation on the court, and loneliness off it.
Well, consultants also have marketable skills that don't depend on them fighting aging and injury and are actually making money on the road vs going into debt potentially with nothing to show for it. I'd say that helps one sleep easy and not feel so constantly anxious.
> they're in a competitive field so they have to stay on top of their rest and diet at all times
Versus a consultant where you're racking up miles and points, have a per diem, and usually treated to a client dinner and/or sports game. Personally I enjoyed traveling for work when I was young and single. Depending on the hotel you're staying at, you can meet other traveling workers and commiserate.
The difference is: consultants are expected to get paid after they complete the job, tennis players lose a lot more matches on average than they win so they usually do not get paid.
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.
This may have been true at one time, but it is not true now. 128 players qualify for the first round of each of the four major tournaments and for each, the players have a guaranteed payday even if they lose in the first round. For the 128 who qualify for the US Open, players will get over $80k for just playing the first round, even if they lose.
For example, the 101st ranked ATP (men) player has made over $450k from prize money in just a little over half of this season. The 102nd ranked player has made over $330k so far. Considering that there are two more majors left this year which they'll likely qualify for, they'll likely make another several hundred thousand more at-least this year from just competition.
Many of the top 150 tennis players often make the equivalent amount to their prize money or greater in sponsorships. The lack of sustainable income from just competition becomes more true once you look outside the top 150.
The low ranking tennis players that the article referred to were outside the top 300, which meant that they were stuck playing the futures tournaments where there is little possibility for money. Conor Niland, who wrote the article, only briefly achieved a career high ranking of 129, but spent most of his career ranked outside of the top 300.
The problem is it is different 128 in each major, and the overlap across all four majors in a year is significantly less than 100. People move up and down the rankings a lot. To actually make a living you need to be consistently in the top 100, year after year. Your two examples are both very good players who spent most of the last 6 months well inside of top 100: in Feb, van Assche was #68 and Nishioka was #47. Of course they did well. Look at those who spent the last 12 months outside of top 100, and remember that total expenses of tour life can get as high as $20k/mo.
The players that compete in each of the majors does not vary that widely. The most points come from the higher tiered tournaments and to get into the higher tiered tournaments, a player has to have a higher amount of points, which grants the player direct entry, which is how most players get into tournaments. The only alternatives to get into tournaments are entry by wildcard or qualification via a qualification tournament, each of which only grants entry to a small minority of players in any given tournament. For the US Open, the top 101 ATP ranking spots are given direct entry. As I mentioned, ranking spots are largely self-reinforcing, so the entries do not vary considerably. Also, players outside the top 100 are not spending $20k per month to tour. That is a wildly inaccurate even for most players inside the top 100.
$330k would be good for an individual with a desk job, but when you factor in the other costs to run the "enterprise" of a tennis player, what does the take home look like?
IE how much does a tennis coach cost? Travel and lodging for tournaments. I'm assuming they might have a medical expert or nutritionist on the staff as well?
330k is his earnings from only a little over half of the season. It is probably only half of earnings this year also, considering that an equal amount is likely made from sponsorships, given that Yoshihito is Japan's second highest ranking ATP player. Top 150 players usually have separate sponsorships for both clothing and racquets. A quick search reveals Yoshihito has brand ties to Yonex, Morinaga & Company, Miki House and AFH.
how much money tennis makes? it's fancy and sure lots of rich people like it, but it's probably nowhere near NBA money. (especially since NBA is targeting the Asian market too, with self-censorship and all.)
To be fair, the same could be said about a lot of gamers. People spend $1000+ on a gaming PC and even if they enjoy playing competitively, most of them never go pro. I wonder if pro tennis is a case of people not wanting to go pro or not being able to go pro.
Edit: I think a handful of people are misunderstanding my point. I'm saying that not everything has to have a monetary return on investment. Even if the "opportunity cost" of spending all that time grinding is super high, the return is just the enjoyment that one gets from playing the game or from feeling accomplished to reach a certain goal/rank even if it's not pro level.
$1000 could be less than the costs of just flights to one weekend tennis tournament which, because of seeding, you're highly likely to go out in the first round as a low ranked player.
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?
sure more money translates to better coaching probably, but it seems that ceteris paribus better players can spend many years being better.
so basically rising players have an logarithmic curve with an asymptote. and sure they are getting better and higher, but they should estimate their peak. especially because even if current top players retire younger ones can easily take the spot from more experienced players.
all in all the current ranking system is very efficient (lots of data points, it's not like boxing where matches are organized after some initial success to maximize the money made, slowly take on opponents that seem beatable or otherwise lucrative, etc.)
tennis and other very athletic individual sports are mature (progress is mostly due to technology, dietary know-how, better data-driven coaching), and there's just no big chance of an underdog beating the numbers. (especially considering that the numbers are much better, again due to more and better data and compute)
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.
> expelled from the country due to a whim of a local politician in a position of power
It was the Australian Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. That is a federal position. Saying “local politician” makes it sound like it was the city major or something. But if you mean a politician local to Australia, sure. Who else do you think should have decided?
There are a lot of small insular little fields like this where the main people all know each other personally and professionally: touring musicians, professional surfers, that sort of thing. Tennis players definitely.
When one of these people receives negative publicity that reaches the general public and no one from their field really speaks out on their behalf, you can usually assume it's because they're widely disliked among their peers. Professional tact may prevent colleagues from publicly saying anything against them, but they will just decline the opportunity to speak in their favor like this.
It's a heuristic and not a perfect one but it's pretty reliable. If it were just a matter of internal sport politics they would have some allies that would come to their defense. If they are personally disliked even by their associates & allies you get this kind of silence.
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.