‘Challenger level is about survival’: brutal reality of life below elite tennis

Clips from THE GUARDIAN by Ervin Ang

“The cities, conditions are not the best, different from when you play the best tournaments. The Challengers are tough. Sometimes I get very upset because you go a long way to win 30 matches and you’re still outside the top 100. It’s way too much.”

The life of a player can be far from fancy. Casual fans may look toward Carlos Alcaraz’s lucrative sponsorship deals with envy, but those on the fringes of the top 100 and beyond live a starkly contrasting reality. The less glamorous side of the sport involves endless travelling, cost cutting to make ends meet and battling bouts of loneliness.

Kevin Clancy, a sports psychologist who worked with Ireland’s top players, believes tennis and golf are the most psychologically demanding sports. He says: “It’s roughly about 20% of the time that you’re on court and hitting the ball, so there’s 80% of the time where you’re doing a lot of thinking.

“Tennis is a sport that mentally could beat you up really, really badly. For players at Challenger level, it’s about survival. They need to play more tournaments and have that constant pressure of, ‘I need to perform and get points’.

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“These players are playing in front of a man and his dog in the middle of nowhere. It’s really tough from a psychological perspective.”

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 “It’s not just forehands and backhands, it’s how much can you suffer? How much can you travel? How much can you sleep in different beds every week? We take almost as many flights as pilots. It’s a lonely sport.

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For all their sacrifices, a juicy financial return is far from guaranteed. In 2024, Nikoloz Basilashvili returned from an elbow injury and earned $63,183 in prize money. But after subtracting flight costs and paying his coaches, the Georgian said he made a net loss of about $120,000.

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“You are mostly alone and you don’t really have a lot of friends to talk to. I don’t know if there is any other sport like this, to take a flight on the same day you play a match and then next week you are in another city. 

Whoa, Nelly

“WHOA, NELLY!”

Rapacious: adjective rapacious landlords. grasping, greedy, avaricious, acquisitive, covetous, mercenary, materialistic, insatiable, predatory, voracious, usurious, extortionate; informal money-grubbing; North American English informal grabby. ANTONYMS  generous.

OFF COURSE

I could pee off the deck , of course.

If I had the stream of a horse.

But my pump has grown dim

and if I hit the deck’s rim, 

She will know,  for sure, of course.  

—-RAMBLES TOGETHER.

We drew for draft picks, 6 players per team.  For each win your six wins you get one point.  Like the NAIA tennis championships

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f5-a4WRfggvaNXCvbeXKgwZQiVUmwuUXAQnP1DYw2tI/edit?tab=t.0

Son Tee designed and manages this. The “draft” was fun. POP

Your kids don’t want your “stuff ” ( See George Carlin ). I only owned two pairs of dress shoes in my life–Johnson and Murphy tassle loafers. One truly observant Alumni noticed them after twenty years : “Coach, is that the same pair of shoes you wore in 1970?” Bullseye.

Cleaning out my “stuff” yesterday I noticed the surviving J&M’s. Pair 2 has a quarter sized sole hole. The “Shoe Nazi ” in Burlington, NC estimated repair at more than I paid for them. One of my offspring wears the same size shoe. Don’t even ask.

There is precedent .

My apartment was broken into in 1968. The front and back doors were left wide open. It didn’t take long to inventory my posessions : Nothing was deemed worthy of stealing.

SO—-THE JUKE BOX ( Below is from PLAY IS WHERE LIFE IS by TP).

NOTE—While tempermental, this ” ancient ” (71 years old ) 1954 classic still will blast 45’s worthy of neighborhood complaints.

While a professed “Minimumalist”, the College gladly accepted my considerable Bob Dylan collection.

Now to find a proper home for an old friend.

The Juke Box

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzQbfxgbGzzMjRMbtznpXJKDdGSL

Upon retiring I asked wife-type, Margaret , WHERE? Answer–BEACH! We both liked the shore and she grew up on Lake Huron. She reasoned “…yes, but mainly I know the kids will visit us there. And eventually bring my grandchildren to me. “

The Raleigh family and the Boulder family were here last week. Somehow we have retained the tradition of family meals together. And , for a while, the young ones remain for after dinner conversations. The oldest grandchild had just graduated from Boulder High School, and while I was unable to attend, I watched via ZOOM.

I commented that the speaker made a fine talk. Then someone asked who spoke at my college graduation? I do remember the speaker’s name and title. Yet I had to admit being among the “overserved RWL ” –participants common to college students the night before graduation. Or, I was hungover from RUN. WALK. LAY DOWN booze.

Sitting on the aisle seat I began to drift. Proximity classmates later laughed about the snoring

The tassle on the “mortar board “was put into motion as my own snoring whiplashed me semi conscious. I thought the tassle was someone trying to enter our aisle and knocked the “funny hat” into the next row.

That was it. My classmates who witnessed this scene and sounds could hold on no longer. Raucus laughter erupted from our area —and the unnamed speaker stopped, wondering what was funny about what he had just said?

Margaret is self effacing but I guess she felt the need to offset my confession. Asked about her rememberances- she told of being the class speaker at her graduation from nurses training . When some one asked what she talked about she said, “from MARKINGS by Dag Hammarskjold : Goodness is something so simple…Always to live for others, never to seek ones own advantage”.

Son Dan was next. After saying that no one in class could remember anything but the theme the speaker chose –CHAWSIS. “You are going to have to make some CHAWSIS ( Choices)” . Dan said “…thirty years later his class mates still remember.

On a very serious note—This speaker should have the stage now. SAPIENS by Yuval Harari got a lot of attention years back. Followed up by HOMO DEUS, I have followed him as best I could. Now NEXUS is out and I am trying to grasp his prescient admonitions. Two things jumped out at me: 1. This book is deeper and tougher to absorb. 2. He is less optimistic now and is telling us why.

Artificial Inteligence has a very dangerous potential. We must prioritize the choices we must make.

From a review of NEXUS:

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI–a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Time to vote!

Chawsis !

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can” (John Wesley )

A fellow tennis coach recently made this comment about YouTube tennis instruction: “there is mostly junk out there. ”

Here is a suggestion for intermediate players and backhand overheads.

Classic instruction has tradtional advice much like this–

1. Avoid the shot if possible. Once you realize the lob is headed over the backhand shoulder, use your feet and legs quickly and turn the backhand into a powerful forehand smash. Or a much better forehand than one of the most difficult tennis shots.
2. Ah– but sometimes you have no chance time wise and now the only choice is a backhand.
3. This ia a unique shot. Some can execute this most difficult overhead after developing these unusual skills: A. Point the elbow of the hitting arm almost straight up, having turned to the backhand side. As you make this new shot straighten the elbow ansd Snap the wrist so the ball is hit with the arm sraight.
4. This advice appeared most often. My long time attempts to follow this advice yeilded limited success.
5. ******As the two hander evolved youngters tought themselves what worked. Most average players had a tough time with this odd overhead. The way young girls (mostly ) reacted was by developng a new technique. Unable to run around this shot, they let the lob lower itself to just above shoulder height where they could tattoo what was much like a two handed volley.
6. Its origin belongs to young girls, but all but the real talented should be aware of its possibilities.

“…If you don’t like jelly there is always jam.

If you don’t like turkey there is always ham.

But there ain’t no substitute for love!” (JOE ROBINSON )