No better place to start than the present: the here, now and why. I am sitting in a room at the Tanoan Country Club in Albuquerque, NM at the tennis center waiting for my 3:00 PM practice session. That’s the here and a little bit of the why: the rest of the puzzle is the fact that an ITF Pro Circuit event is taking place at the Tanoan Country Club this week, with $75,000 total prize money, and I am the local qualifying wildcard. Just in explaining the here, why and now I’ve run into some vocabulary that may be foreign to some even though to players on the circuit like myself the terms “qualifying” and “local wildcard” are akin to Biblical law in a Kosher Jewish household-no exaggeration.
The whole goal of this blog is to shed some light on these terms and explain what they mean to a player who is trying to make a living playing professional tennis. The deeper and more detailed we go, the more you will be able to get a vision for the reality of this profession, what it’s like on an everyday basis, and the issues that are involved for the players and from the players’ perspectives. There are many vantage points of the professional women’s tennis business; tournament directors, sponsors, volunteers, trainers, WTA employees, the list goes on and on. This blog takes the point of view of the athlete, and will show you the vantage through the eyes of someone with that experience.
So exactly what kind of experience am I writing from? Flash back to one year ago. Fresh off 4 years on the Tour and ITF Circuit I have just won an money tournament in Fresno, CA- $500 for the winner and I say to myself, “OK, that pays part of my rent.” I am the Assistant Coach of the women’s tennis team at Fresno State University. Flash back to one year before that. I am at the same tournament in Albuqerque, NM. Flash back 3 years further to 2005: same tournament in Albuquerque, I flew here from a tournament on the border of Mexico and Texas in a town called Matamoros (where another year back I won my first pro event). I had been playing as a pro for 3 months, and had just graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Stanford University. I played pro tennis full time for four years, staying around 300-400 in singles, and 200 in doubles. Those are the numbers. I traveled and played in 12 different countries, lived in Dallas for 2 years and Orlando for 2 years but never owned an apartment.
Here is the point in the story where I will make my first important distinction about professional tennis-there are two tours that you could call the minor and major leagues of women’s tennis. You have the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) Tour on one hand, the major league that everyone strives towards because it has more money. Then you have the ITF (International Tennis Federation) Circuit which is the minor leagues, where everyone big has played and had success at one point or another in their career-they have less points and money than WTA tournaments but they all go towards the same WTA ranking. The tournament in Albuquerque is an ITF Pro Circuit Event, where I’ve spent the majority of my four years of full-time play.
One might ask (and many have), “So how does one ‘go pro’ like you did?” It’s really very simple to do, and the implications of being pro versus amateur are really only relevant in the USA where only kids with amateur status can accept a scholarship to play for a university. What does it mean to be pro? It means that you accept prize money, that’s the most fundamental and simplistic definition. The NCAA has a whole laundry list of detailed criteria for amateur status but we won’t go into detail on that. Not just because they say you’re not eligible as an amateur if you’ve played on a team with a professional (or just sat on the bench for 30 seconds of a pro game for your mom’s team at age 13-the case of a women’s basketball player from Australia at Fresno State two years ago-they yanked the Conference title from the team). And not just because they take team championships and scholarships away from 17-year olds with little other opportunity because the kids signed a scammer’s document they didn’t receive a penny from at age 13. Whenever there is a monopoly on a business such as the one the NCAA has on college sports, the attempt to protect student-athletes will always eventually include a handful of arbitrary rules and classifications that actually hurt the same student-athletes. Until that monopoly receives some kind of a competitive check and they have a reason to consistently make sense, there’s no use discussing their policies in great depth. This blog is from a players’ perspective anyways, not the perspective of a university compliance officer. We don’t have to detail their definition of a pro versus an amateur.
All a player has to do in order to turn pro is take their prize money without filling out any amateur expense forms that say you didn’t take prize money over the amount you paid in expenses. Again, most of these forms are at tournaments in the USA-Europe is not so consistent with amateur forms at tournaments, and why should they be? There’s no induction ceremony, no ritual, and you don’t need a big check from an agency or sponsor to go pro. Just don’t take the precautions the NCAA asks for to prove your amateurism and you can call yourself a pro!! The tournaments in the USA will ask you to put a “P” or an “A” by your name on their lists when you show up for a tournament. That’s about the biggest woop-de-do you’ll find. Not very glamorous, right?
Alright, so far we’ve covered great ground—pro versus amateurism and WTA Tour versus ITF Circuit. By the way women and men share the ITF Circuit, but the men’s major league is the ATP Tour. These terms and distinctions, especially the WTA Tour/ITF Circuit are the heart and core at the issue of trying to “make it” as a professional tennis player, aka MAKE $$$ as a professional which is what we are all trying to do.
So what is the ranking at which you make enough money to cover your travel expenses? And at what ranking can you actually say you’ve “made it?” Here are some numbers to get you thinking. I will start again with the now-me, here in Albuqerque. One-way flight each way $400.00 total, hotel room (with great deal) $240.00 for 6 days, food $30.00/day realistically. Lost week of revenue teaching at my job in Dallas at least $500.00, and monthly rent $700 for my apartment including energy bill, water, trash, etc. So for 7 days in a tournament that’s relatively cheap for me to get to we’re talking about roughly $840.00 for the week—not calculating in the base revenue opportunity cost loss from my job. Pause a moment, and let’s switch over to exhibit A, and American Tour professional Vania King. Year-to-date in August she has won $440,000 in prize money on the WTA Tour. She won Wimbledon in doubles and has maintained a top 100 ranking in singles. Is she famous? No. Does she make a great living at professional tennis-yes. This is the situation that all professional tennis players strive for.
Again I will go back to the here and now: me finishing this first blog entry in my hotel room at 9PM, passively listening to my roommate’s telephone conversation and playing some music on my computer. My first round qualifying match is tomorrow morning, second match after 10 (one match goes on a designated court, finishes and then mine goes on right after), my roommate and I will warm up at 9:30 AM and my TCU college coach who is here will pick us up at 9AM from the hotel room. I won’t say when the next entry will be because I want to remain consistent without over-committing myself at the same time, so I will just say, signing off and until next time, goodnight,
Story
No comments:
Post a Comment