The Pros Are There for a Reason … or a Wild Card

Tennis may appear accessible on television, but the reality of those competing in majors is much different than what confidence allows us to assume.

A vacation-edition mailbag so let’s rip through some Q&As …

So I was sitting at my desk last week when an email came across the blower. Subject: “Survey shows: 71% of US Tennis Players Think They Could Win Against Pros.” O.K., I’m opening. This was “the findings of a survey we did over at Action Network.” Clearly this was not a rigorous, peer-review academic study. (Note the credibility-undermining phrase “over at.”) But neither was this a sample size of six guys at a bar. There were 2,043 respondents and among the findings:

• Almost three out of four American tennis players think they could win a game against a professional player in a best-of-three-set match.
• Women are more optimistic than men. 71% of female recreational players believe they could win a game against a professional.
• 81% of players aged between 18 and 24 think they could win a game. Less than half (47%) over the age of 55 think they could complete the feat.
• More than half of American amateurs think their serve matches or surpasses the speed of the average pro.

This aroused quite a discussion online. As Andy Roddick noted, “I would lose 6–0, 6–0 to Novak right now. I doubt my neighbor Bill would do better.”

Roddick won the 2003 US Open and reached four other major finals :: Jerry Lai/USA TODAY Sports

The first order of business: Andy (and others), of course, nailed it. It’s not just incorrect, but bordering on delusion, to think you can win a game from a pro in a best-of-three match. You can’t. Any more than you can knock out Tyson Fury or hit a 95-mile-an-hour cutter over the fence or outshoot Steph Curry. Pros are pros for a reason. On virtually any dimension—speed, precision, spin, conditioning, confidence—they are better than you. By orders of magnitude. A player must win 48 points to win a best-of-three match. You really think you can win four points in a six-point interval against a world-class player? There are matches when even other pros can’t win a game.

What’s far more interesting is the “why.” Why would recreational players think this way? There’s a lot of social psychology suggesting that people don’t understand probability nor their own limitations. Americans think they can beat a wild animal in an unarmed fistfight. A famous study asked Americans whether they considered themselves “better than average” drivers. Something like 90% said “yes.” Some had a distorted sense of their abilities. Others didn’t grasp the concept of average. (We can note, too, the respondents’ nationality. This is from the film Waiting for “Superman”: “Since the 1970s, US schools have failed to keep pace with the rest of the world. Among 30 developed countries, we rank 25th in math and 21st in science. The top 5 percent of our students, our very best, rank 23rd out of 29 developed countries. In almost every category we've failed behind, except one.” … The answer? Self-confidence.)

I wonder whether this result doesn’t, at some level, reflect coverage. Watch a match, and tennis looks easy—a couple of players, batting the ball into boxes. Television gives little sense for the absurd precision. It doesn’t capture the spin being imparted on those 110-mph second serves. Some broadcasters (one in particular) refer to any unseeded players as “journeymen.”

And yet maybe this isn’t a bad thing. You have pros who stand. You have players competing into their late 30s and 40s. The players scan as normal people, accessible, and someone you could be friends with, not superheroes. If tennis comes across as accessible … if the sport creates this almost comical delusion that the average player could hang with the pros … maybe that’s not a bad thing?

---

Good for Venus Williams for still wanting to play at her age, but should she really get a wild card for every tournament she enters? (She just received one from the tournament in Cincinnati.) Sports are supposed to be a meritocracy, and you should have to earn your spot in a tournament. Would Venus still be playing if she had to go through qualifying rounds to get into tournaments (like Sonya Kenin)? I think we know the answer to that question.

I thought the idea of WC was to give a shot to some up-and-coming player or some player who has missed time due to an injury/having a child, etc. I am O.K. with giving Venus WC to Grand Slam events like Wimbledon and U.S. Open to honor her great career and being a champion at those two tournaments. I just think that with her ranking #521, she should have earned her way into other tournaments based on her current play, not her performance from many years ago. Thoughts?

Bob Diepold, Charlotte, N.C.

Williams snagged her first top 20 win in four years with a straight-sets upset of Veronika Kudermetova in the first round :: Cara Owsley/The Enquirer/USA TODAY Network

• Wild cards are deeply problematic and fundamentally unfair. They benefit players who, by sheer accident of birth, come from wealthy countries or those that host majors. They are subjective in a sport that prides itself on objectivity. They are a gateway to corruption. (Note how the majors swap wild cards as if they are cryptocurrency.) Yet … promoters invest significantly to stage events and need a means of placing marquee players who would not qualify on their own. There should be a way to get an exciting junior player a boost or accommodate, say Christopher Eubanks, riding the momentum of a breakthrough. So we all hold our nose. (Again, imagine being the X-ranked player and seeing a colleague ranked beneath you get an automatic golden ticket, while you have to try to qualify.)

But let’s consider the continuum of unpleasantness here. Let’s pick on IMG and Miami. We’ve seen the girlfriend of an IMG-repped player get a wild card. At a time when tennis has taken a stand against Russian players, we’ve seen IMG give wild cards to Russian teenagers simply because they are clients. Five years ago Frances Tiafoe—young, American, Black, fresh from having won the Delray Beach Open—was denied a wild card simply because he was not an IMG client. Expanding this beyond Miami … we’ve seen players’ otherwise undeserving siblings get wild cards. We’ve seen stars demand wild cards for friends as a condition for their entering an event. It’s all gross.

Given the canvas here, conferring automatic entry to a seven-time major winner seems like a minor grievance. And I would note that on the day of the Cincy announcement, this made sufficient news—bringing publicity to the tournament, inducing fans to buy tickets to see Williams for perhaps a final time. Which is one of the aims of the wild card to begin with.

---

Jon,

You keep telling us that tennis after the Big 3 will be fine. It will still be exciting and compelling and fun to watch. Well if that’s true, then why am I seeing so much Casper Ruud??????

P.

• Weirdly as I answer this, I am watching Ruud try to serve out Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. Is Ruud the best watch out there? Perhaps not. Is he a solid, unflashy player who has reached the finals of three of the past six majors he has entered? Yes. (Update: Ruud lost 7–6 in the third.)

---

Jon:

I read with interest the letter and your comment in Wednesday’s mailbag regarding the elimination of excessive toweling in the aftermath of the ATP & WTA COVID-19 restrictions. You wholeheartedly agreed with the reader that this is a good thing, but you did not call out the most egregious “toweler” of all time.

Much like one cannot talk about grunting in tennis and neglect to mention Monica Seles and Maria Sharapova by name as the pioneers of this blight on the game, the topic of toweling CANNOT be discussed without taking Rafael Nadal to task. Yes, he exerts more energy than virtually anyone else in tennis history, and yes—the guy sweats profusely. However, as his matches in the last two years show, he didn’t need to towel off THAT much. In addition to countless cases of his receiving illegal coaching, he toweled off after virtually every single point of his career until the advent of this new rule.

I know you have a relationship with Nadal; you’ve written a book about the guy, and you have done numerous one-on-one interviews with him over the years. You don’t get to do these things without having close access to him, which is something I’m sure you are loath to relinquish. Hey, the guy is one of my favorite players ever also, but come on! You can’t be afraid to take Nadal, or any other star player, to task when it is warranted. You’re certainly not shy about bringing up controversial aspects of Novak Djokovic. Nadal’s toweling was ALWAYS more about gamesmanship than it ever was about perspiration control. No different than his insistence that his opponent always take the court before him, or his deliberate pace of play.

John, San Francisco

• Neither fear nor favor. If I am holding back because of personal relationships or fondness, it’s time to turn in the badge. It’s funny, Rafa (and, yes, Djokovic, too) are to pace of play what Charles Barkley is to “the line” (i.e., they go riiiiight up to it). But I’ve thought that in Nadal’s case, it’s more because of his rituals than any excessive toweling. I once saw a player who will go nameless (named Kei Nishikori) go through an elaborate toweling routine after his opponent double-faulted. You’re standing there. You barely move. You don’t have to swing. And you need to dry off? To me, that’s always been the highest expression of the unnecessary linen use.

---

Thought it could be of interest:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000648

(Was the last author inspired to write the paper as they’re a relative of one of the paper’s subjects? Ha)

In case you can't see the paper via link, I’ve also attached it.

Best, Troy

• Thanks much. “Who’s afraid of the GOATs? - Shadow Effects of Tennis Superstars.” And one of three authors is Stefan Thiem, who, presumably has a gorgeous one-hander? Hate to get all TLDR, but if anyone wants to read and send the group a summary, I’ll buy lunch.

---

Jon, are you a seller on Canadian tennis? All the promise our core young talent is on the wane. First-round losses in our home tournament and so many lackluster results in this year’s majors suggest our great tennis renaissance may be done for now. Should I start getting ready for hockey?

Neil Grammer, Toronto

• Um … how *are* the Maple Leafs looking?

---

Shots, miscellany

The USTA Foundation, the charitable arm of the United States Tennis Association Incorporated (USTA), announced that 18-time Grand Slam singles champion and former world No. 1 Chris Evert will be honored with the Serving Up Dreams Award at the USTA Foundation’s annual Opening Night Gala on Aug. 28 at the 2023 U.S. Open.