As the top few hundred tennis players in the world competed in the $71 million Australian Open in January 2020, thousands of others were playing in small tournaments you've never heard of to win enough matches to one day play in a Grand Slam event like the one in Melbourne.
MarketWatch spent the past four months following one of these players to find out what it is like to try to make it on the professional tennis tour.
It can be more difficult to succeed in tennis and other individual sports than in team sports because you do not earn a salary and must pay for your own travel. What Abraham Asaba is trying to do is especially difficult. The 22-year-old, who grew up in the West African nation of Ghana, did not take tennis lessons as a kid.
"When I first got here, I wasn't really a good tennis player," Asaba told MarketWatch about when he moved to the U.S. at 16. He said his family could not afford lessons when he was growing up, and he was busy working.
He played a lot of soccer and worked on his fitness on the beach, but, when it came to tennis, he mostly served, modeling his motion after Roger Federer's. After he arrived in the U.S., though, he lived and trained with his cousin Salifu Mohammed, a former touring pro who was teaching tennis in New York, and went on to play Division I tennis for Virginia Tech.
Many top-ranked tennis players are from countries with national programs that support the most promising young athletes with training and coaching. The United States Tennis Association, for example, has 29 national coaches who work with top juniors and touring pros. Some pros also come from families with enough money to pay for a private coach, or to send their child to a tennis academy. Asaba says he does not feel at a disadvantage as a result of not having grown up in those circumstances.
"I don't think about unfair. If I grew up here, I might be too relaxed. How I grew up, I had to work hard for everything I got. That attitude has been keeping me going," he says.
Here is what it's like to travel the U.S. playing in tournaments where the pay is paltry, the seats are often empty, and winning is crucial to achieve your goals.
"The ultimate goal is to get to play all the Grand Slams and be ranked top 50 in doubles," Asaba told me the first time we spoke, in September 2019.
Right now, he is playing far from the US Open and Wimbledon, in places like East Lansing, Mich., and Harlingen, Texas. His ATP rankings, tabulated by the Association of Tennis Professionals, are 1,755 in singles and 1,048 in doubles, as of Jan. 2. For perspective, there are 1,927 men with an ATP singles ranking, and only 128 make it into a Grand Slam tournament.
Asaba and others playing in what are called futures tournaments need to earn enough points to move up in the rankings and become eligible to play in challenger tournaments, the next level up. Asaba says if he wins enough matches to get his ranking up to 300, he'll be eligible to play in most challengers.
At a $25K futures tournament at Rice University in Houston, Asaba pointed to three of the other players on the practice courts. "That guy made it into the US Open qualifying. That guy won Kalamazoo [the Boys' Junior National Tennis Championship]. He made it into the main draw of the US Open."
While those achievements may not impress people, who follow living legends like Serena Williams and Roger Federer, that level of success is a dream for Asaba. To reach those milestones and more, he would need to travel with a coach, according to many people MarketWatch spoke with for this article.
"Absolutely no way Abe can make it without a coach," says Stanford Boster. Boster, who spent several years coaching for the USTA, was at the Houston tournament as a private coach for two players, who each pay him $250 a day plus expenses. Boster had watched the lithe and athletic 6-foot-5 Asaba practice and play in matches, and sees him as an incredible athlete, but one who needs a coach to make it out of futures and challengers.
Adds Martin Blackman, the general manager of USTA player development: "If you lose a close match in the first tournament, your coach can go over the match with you and discuss areas you could have executed better and use that to train you over the course of that week. A coach can make a huge difference."
But coaches are expensive. As one former No. 1 player in the world, Jim Courier, tells MarketWatch: "While you are not making a lot of money, you have to be selective. Each individual is running a business."
Tennis pro Noah Rubin, 23, reached a career high of 125th in the world in 2018, but stopped traveling with a coach in 2019 because he wasn't making enough money to afford the cost. Rubin says he spent $1,800 to $3,000 a week plus travel for a coach. Unlike Asaba, though, Rubin grew up with a lot of coaching and won the Wimbledon junior boys' title in 2014.
Asaba has not been able to afford to hire a coach, but he has trained at times with fellow players and their coaches. He worked with one player and coach for a few weeks "on patterns and shot selection," and he says they talked a lot about the mental part of the game and what to do between points. "It was really helpful," Asaba recalls.
Rennae Stubbs, who was the No. 1 doubles player in the world in 2000 and is now a tennis commentator on ESPN, tells MarketWatch: "You don't necessarily need a coach if you're a heady player. If you have a partner on court that wants the same thing, you can work on those things together. I think the key is to find a doubles partner that has the same intent and desire to succeed as you."
It is a relatively recent trend for lower-ranked players to travel with a coach, says Michael Starke, a teaching pro in Binghamton, N.Y., who ran a challenger tournament there in the 1980s and 1990s. "Back then, players were going out at night. No one had a trainer. Some had coaches, but it was a whole different thing. They had more of a life outside of tennis."
If you watched the No. 1,000–ranked tennis player in the world, you probably would not think he played at a very different level from the No. 50 player in the world. In tennis, more than most sports, that eye-test difference is small, while the earnings difference is huge.
"You get $3.5 million for winning the US Open, but the winner here makes about $2,500," says Richard Cutler, who runs the $25K tournament in Houston.
Making it into a Grand Slam tournament can be incredibly financially rewarding for players who regularly play in futures and challengers. In recent years, Grand Slam tournaments have increased prize money for every round. Players who lose in the first round of this year's Australian Open, for example, will make over $62,000. And if they make it to the second round, they will earn over $88,000.
But Asaba would not be able to break even if he won all the futures tournaments, he entered this year, when you factor in travel costs.
"Early on, it is challenging. You are not making a living at futures. You need to make it to challengers and then Grand Slam qualifying to keep the lights on and pursue your dream," says Courier, the former No. 1 in the world. "It takes time. He must be smart about managing his finances."
Since graduating from Virginia Tech in 2019, Asaba has worked at a New York–based hedge fund. The entry-level job in investor relations provides him just enough money to pay for his travel to tournaments, and his employer is flexible about his vacation days to enable him to compete on the tour.
Asaba shared his expenses for one week at a tournament in Harlingen, Texas, between Sept. 21 and 28, 2019. He says it's typical of what it costs to go to a tournament, though sometimes he gets free lodging:
- Flight: $700
- Food: $239
- Accommodations: $429
- Total: $1,368
Even if you're in the top 200, as Noah Rubin has been, it can be tough to make a lot of money. He is currently ranked No. 212 and earned $158,548 in 2019. But, he says, after expenses and taxes he made about $60,000. That's one of the reasons he decided to stop traveling with a coach. It's also one of the reasons he considered quitting the tour during 2019. He says that starting Behind the Racquet, which gives pro tennis players a platform to share their stories — has helped keep him excited about the sport both on and off the court.
If you're ranked a little higher than that, though, you do make a good living. Michael Russell, an American player who retired in 2015 — and played most of his career without a coach — made it to No. 60 in the world and was in the top 100 for 10 years before retiring in 2015. He made $2.48 million over his 17-year career by being in the top 100 for more than half of those years. He says he netted about $200,000 a year and invested money early in his career and has passive income coming in now.
And of course if you make it into the top 10, you make millions each year. The top-earning man in 2019 was Rafael Nadal, who made more than $16 million, and the top-earning woman was Ash Barty, who made over $11 million.
According to the International Tennis Federation, which runs and operates futures tournaments, the Davis Cup, the Fed Cup and tennis at the Olympics, among other events, 336 men and 251 women break even in professional tennis each year. The ITF conducted a study in 2014–15 that looked at prize money between 2001 and 2013 for all pro players — the 9,000 men and 5,000 women who played at least one pro tournament. The results didn't factor in the cost of a coach.
"It was a real call to action for us to make the pro tennis world as accessible as possible and as rewarding as possible," Andrew Moss, the head of ITF World Tennis Tour, tells MarketWatch.
As a result, the ITF is trying to help lower-ranked players by adding more tournaments and trying to reduce players' travel costs. Moss says the ITF receives development funding from the Grand Slam tournaments and is using some of it in countries where players otherwise wouldn't have many opportunities. In fact, for the first time in 10 years, the ITF will hold a tournament in Ghana, where Asaba is from, Moss says.
After tennis, he plans to become an entrepreneur. He studied finance and international business at Virginia Tech and would like to create jobs in Ghana and Africa as a whole — to help build up economies in Africa and the Third World.
And he wants to help people like him, who often don't get many opportunities to succeed, by starting a foundation in Africa. "I want to help underprivileged kids get to the next level in an academy setting — like what IMG has, but beyond sports — to also include things like engineering and science. Help build kids up while they're young and connect them with top U.S. colleges," he says, adding: "I already have a plan for it, and, with the connections I'm making now, I can get advice. It's really in my heart."
During the four months we followed Asaba, he never mentioned money as a motivating factor to succeed. He never mentioned money at all, in fact, unless asked about it.
"I want to give back after getting so many opportunities," he says. "If people hadn't helped me, I wouldn't be in this position today. I have to pay it forward."
Credit: marketwatch.com
