As I sit here, wallowing and waiting for the Wozniacki-Dokic Australian Open third round wrap-up, I began to wonder what it must be like, to live on this world as a tennis professional player.
From my vantage point here in our couch in the Philippines, I can only imagine it to be all sorts of wonderful. I mean you get to travel to different cities every week! I’m sure the jetlag’s a bitch, but who cares? You get to shop at the finest places and you can stuff your closet full with fine articles from different countries all over. How sweet would it be if you could say this to your friends, as you all lounge around your humongous room (bought and exquisitely decorated by the millions of dollars you’ve earned on the tour, of course): “Oh that purse, I bought in Mallorca. Doesn’t it go well with this Pashmina scarf that I got on sale in Paris?”
Most of these players are around my age group, if not younger, and were plucked from their daily monotonous routines at early ages because some coach or some such important person saw a huge potential in them. After which, if their country was ill-suited for breeding a young prodigy, they would get whisked off to the finest of the finest tennis schools in the most famous of cities. This would, of course, pave the way for them to learn a whole new language, making most of them bilingual (or trilingual) by the time they’ve stepped out of puberty.
Since they’ve forgone the usual pattern of schooling that us mere mortals have to suffer through, they’d have more time for themselves (after the strenuous practice matches and work-outs, that is) and can enjoy the hobby of their choice. My personal favorite player, Rafael Nadal just loves to go fishing, although I can’t, for the life of me see why. I saw another player on tour, a female one, pick up a rather thick book from a bookstore somewhere and saying that “it’s to get me through when Dostoevsky’s ‘War and Peace’ gets a little too dry”. Did I mention that this other book was written in French? Which is no problem, as this particular eighteen year-old player is fluent in Czech, French and Russian. Insert huge waves of self-pity right here.
But then again, nothing comes without a price.
These people are taken away from their families at an early age and I can’t imagine how life would be if I’d consider it a very good year if I get to spend a measly three to four weeks at home.
They may be home schooled and can speak languages I can’t even pronounce properly but they get to miss the experience of getting up early and going to school, where one can hang out with friends, get scolded by teachers or ace that special test that one crammed five minutes before class for. School might seem tedious when one’s still going through it, but speaking as someone who’s already graduated from the University crowd, I’ve got to say that I miss it.
Also, the sheer pressure that these people must face every time they enter a tennis court; it’s got to be enough to make even an elephant tremble. So much is riding on these people’s soldiers and add that to their own personal (teenaged) demons, and you’ve got yourself a problem. I can’t even imagine going through that once; I’d probably fold under the pressure.
So what’s my point, you ask? Well it’s just that I’ve been thinking how sort of suckish my life is currently right now and I just realized that even though the lives of these professional athletes look so damn good on paper, I still wouldn’t trade in mine for it.
Life, after all, is all just a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
