When you’re younger, you think professional athletes have a charmed life. It’s because you only see the highlights (much like social media) and usually only of the superstars.
I was born in the 80s and a basketball fan, so our super stars were the likes of Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Charles Barkley, etc. As a kid, I didn’t yet know about the darker sides of their very human lives.
It wasn’t until I was older did I fully appreciate it, so today’s story comes from the world of tennis. Tennis, much like other solo sports like golf, is a league of freelancers. You pay your own way and, hopefully, win money in tournaments. Most professional golfers and tennis players barely scrape by.
‘I’m good, I promise’: the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player [The Guardian] – “All serious tennis players – from gods such as Agassi to college players like I was at the time – have to grapple with isolation. For people who are comfortable with it, pro tennis can be a refuge: they find it behind a hotel door, with headphones on in a far-flung airport and, above all, inside the white lines of the court. The downside is that the victories are often private, too. When you remove the headphones, there is probably no one around to talk to; and even if there is, you probably don’t speak the same language. We were a strange cohort: sharing courts, canteens and coaches around the world but remaining ultimately alone.”