I promised a blog each Friday. While we didn't get much feedback (or, more specifically, no feedback) on what name to call this blog, I'll keep that post open for a while so that if you work up the courage to comment, you can do so at any time you desire.
Just finished the third official Seminole High Performance Summer camp week. It's been fun, but I must say I'm excited to be back in my own bed! Was the coach for Russia in the Davis Cup competition, and although we didn't win, the highlight of the competition was beating the first seed, Guatemala, 46 to 45! It was awesome to see some great competition. A lot of the players here truly want to compete, and I know a lot of you out there have dreams of becoming a professional tennis player. I know once I couldn't dream of anything greater than holding up that US Open trophy. But professional tennis can be a little weird with the point system, so I've taken it upon myself to ensure you know what you're getting yourself into. So here it is, the second official blog post of Spearhead Tennis, and it's a "How to" blog. How to become pro!
So you want to be a professional tennis player. Awesome. You
put in countless hours on the tennis court, you follow a specific diet to
maintain your best physical shape possible, and you train mentally throughout
the day, whether during practice or during tournaments. Junior competitive
tennis players often have the goal of going pro. But how, exactly, does pro
tennis work? You’ll need to know a few acronyms to figure out pro tennis first.
ATP, or Association of Tennis Professionals, is a governing
body that comprises professional tennis tournaments. The ATP world tour is a
collection of different stages of tournaments, including everything from grand
slams to ITF futures tennis tournaments. We’ll get to those in a little bit.
ITF, or International Tennis Federation, is another governing body that works
with the ATP in governing both grand slams and futures. Now let’s get to the
point system.
To start out playing pro, unfortunately you can’t just
qualify for grand slams and become a US Open champion as soon as you start.
There is a point system in professional tennis where in each round you win
there are points to be accumulated. Sort of like Super Mario, but without the
cool music and without a chance to save a princess or jump up on a stone to
collect a start. But I digress. The entry level tournaments are called futures.
Futures have the least amount of points per round but any player can get into
them. Once you accumulate a certain amount of points, you will be able to play
higher level tournaments, which thus have more points per round, and more prize
money to be earned. Futures are usually 10,000 or 15,000 dollars worth in prize
money. You may be jumping for joy, getting excited about how much money you’ll
make, but remember that this 10,000 dollars is divided up into pieces, a
certain amount for each round. So the winner will not earn $10,000; it’ll be
more like a thousand or two. As of now, there are 534 futures tournaments in a
year. That means if you wanted to, you could easily travel the world and play a
tournament every week of the entire year. It would probably take this amount of
time (and a substantial amount of investment money) to gain access to
challengers, the next totem pole in professional tennis. There are less of
these throughout the year (178, to be exact), but these tournaments also come
with more points and more prize money, ranging from 35,000 dollars to 150,000
(the higher the prize money, the harder to get into the tournament with few ATP
points). After challengers, there are ATP World Tour Series, ranging from World
Team Cup to Masters tournaments where the prize money is upwards of a million
dollars. Then, finally, come the grand slams, four of them if you didn’t know,
and these are the most prestigious, most awarding, and most handsomely paid
tournaments reserved for the best players in the world. Very few players that
are out of the top 100 in the world qualify for these grand slams. For you to
get an idea of the point system more clearly, here is an example. Novak
Djokovic, the current number one in the men’s ATP rankings, has 12,280 ATP
points. Rafael Nadal, current number two, has 10,060 points. A future tennis
tournament (the entry level tournament) awards 33 ATP points at most.
You might ask how Federer, after his many years of domination
in the tennis world, can be surpassed in just a few years by both Nadal and
Djokovic in ATP points. Remember that every year the points that are
accumulated must be re-earned. So, if Federer won Wimbledon one year and then
gets to the final in the next year, he loses points instead of gaining because
his showing was worse than before. In order to keep the points that one has
accumulated, one must show equal or better results the following year. As a
starting professional tennis player, the idea is to accumulate enough points to
be able to play higher-level tournaments, where more points are awarded for
each round. So, if, say, John Miller, my very unique and completely original
faux name for my example here, wins two futures in his first year of playing,
by getting to the quarterfinals of a challenger in the following year will
match his points earned in those futures and so will keep his points and thus
his ranking.
A word to the wise- professional tennis is a lengthy time
commitment and often a money-draining endeavor (at least for the first few
years, when playing futures) that will make prospects of attaining a tennis
college scholarship nearly impossible if you earn money on the tour. The NCAA
is very strict in letting professional tennis players that have accepted prize
money into college tennis- oftentimes this leads to decreased years of
eligibility and fines to pay back the money earned, and then some. You’ll come
to a fork in the road close to college time where you’ll have to decide which road
you want to take- the professional tennis career or a college education and
college tennis career. You can always play professional tennis after college,
but once you choose the path of a professional tennis player, you lose the
chance of getting your education paid for, at least in part. Choose wisely!
Now that you know how ATP points work and the logistics of
professional tennis rankings, let’s go play Super Mario with the cool music and
accumulate some points! :)
