The show is over. The Arthur Ashe stadium is empty. The cleaning men are combing through the bleachers collecting the garbage. The US Open is finished. Time to get to the bottom of things.
Let`s take a look at the world of women’s professional tennis more closely: the Queen has won again. A Dane has returned to the absolute top. A Chinese girl is carried off the court on a stretcher in total agony in the semi-finals. At the start of the Open the “young and wild ones” blew” some established players off the court, but then they burned out like a shooting star in the tennis sky.
Currently there is a film by David Cronenberg which is being shown in the movies. It deals critically with Hollywood show business. The director discusses the problems of the young stars of the film industry: “I think that is the fate of many child stars. But what do their parents teach them? Imagine if their mothers are also their agents, their fathers are their managers, and most of the family´s total income is earned by them, the children. They feel that power and they also are aware of the fear of their parents, if the prodigies suddenly are not able to perform as planned by their entourage. They indulge in drugs, get in trouble with the law and thereby lose their jobs. This pressure is enormous.”
This accurate characterization of the “dark side of fame” shows certain analogies to the way the WTA system ´produces´ its stars: children are drilled at an early stage for a tennis career, taken out of school before graduating to focus on their future `profession`. Before one reaches the rankings, where the “money rolls”, a lot of money and time must be invested. To reduce costs, the parents take over the important role of manager, advisor, sometimes even coach. The fear that the livelihood of the family might be ruined if the tennis prodigy fails is omni-present. . The pressure gets stronger and stronger. Each unexpected defeat is treated as a disaster. This is not very beneficial to a peaceful family life.
How about some examples of this peaceful family life? Mary Pierce`s father beat up players on the premises who dared to win against his daughter. The father of a Yugoslavian top-ten player regularly beats his daughter if she loses. These incidents have belatedly forced WTA officials to ban violent parents from entering the tennis grounds.
These two examples actually happened and are publicly known. But, there are numerous cases of the tennis families in which excessive violence is exercised and kept secret. Numerous coaches can tell some similar stories. Even the WTA officials know about these `developments`.
Up until now we have emphasized the physical side. What about the mental suffering?
A former German top fifty player describes how young professionals might deal with self-destructive losses: “You trained well, you’ve eaten healthy food, then you lose an important game. You go to your hotel, you are alone with your own accusations. You start to see yourself as a failure. You begin to hate yourself. To punish yourself, you eat as much chocolate or other unhealthy foods as possible in a very short time, as much as you would normally eat in a whole month. You get sick, but you feel it serves you right. This form of self punishment is common among my fellow players. Some of my peers have even inflicted wounds on themselves with kitchen knives.”
Most ATP players are totally shocked when their female colleagues – which rarely happens - report the happenings in the WTA after the obligatory shake-hands at the net: “Your defeated opponent gives you a friendly smile while stretching out her hand. When you turn around however, she spits at you – unnoticed by the public. These are not isolated incidents; they happen again and again.”
It is not surprising that in these stressful situations drugs also tend to be part of the game.
A pitiful case should be described at the end of this article as an inglorious climax. In a well known international tennis camp after a hard day of practice two assistant coaches drove to a party with their female talents. They were driving on a highway when the car crashed.
The two girls were killed and the police found that all four occupants had pumped their bodies full of drugs. Of course, this tragic affair had consequences. The tennis camp is world renowned. Little information about this incident was made known to the public, although the legal process itself was drawn out long for a long time. In the end the system always proves to be more powerful than the individual.
Nice healthy and clean world of women’s professional tennis?
Pomp and Glory? It really does exist.
But there are always two sides to the same story.