More Retirements ?

RJA · Hall of fame

RE: More Retirements ?

Spectator · All-time great

Is there a Paul Delgado as well as Jamie Delgado working with Martin Lee? Or is this an error?

Ms O'Brien is one of my favourite players of all time ... but I rather suspect that her intellectual gifts, as well as her discipline, helped to make her accomplishments possible. It may not be quite so easy for everyone!

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Possibly Miss O'Brien is more academically gifted than most. I am not sure I buy the argument though that she would have had a better tennis career if she had not studied alongside it. Many of the top players are also keen golfers. Others have ridiculous high scores in assorted computer games. Some have watched every film ever made. Others are great readers. Katie, on the other hand, spent her downtime studying. And there is downtime - sitting in airports waiting for connections, sitting at tournaments on rain days, evenings at tournaments where you haven't got friends or supporters with you, events where you are knocked out early but staying for the following week. Believe me, it can add up to an awful lot of hours. Yes, there is gym work to be done, opponents to be scouted, practice sessions on court but they rarely take up all the hours available.

RJA · Hall of fame

The Optimist wrote:
Possibly Miss O'Brien is more academically gifted than most. I am not sure I buy the argument though that she would have had a better tennis career if she had not studied alongside it.

I am not saying that she would have, merely that it is possible she would have.

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

RJA wrote:
The Optimist wrote:
Possibly Miss O'Brien is more academically gifted than most. I am not sure I buy the argument though that she would have had a better tennis career if she had not studied alongside it.
I am not saying that she would have, merely that it is possible she would have.

The point I was trying to make is that IMO it wouldn't have made any difference one way or the other. Tennis players have so many dead hours to kill that if she hadn't been studying during them she would have been doing some other non-tennis (but possibly more fun) activity.

indiana · Tennis legend

Doubt we can say for sure. Depends to a large extent on how good Katie was at compartmentalising and her stress levels re study or rather moreso near exams.

It can't necessarily be equated with playing golf or computer games.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Given she made her a Wimbledon debut the same day she sat an A-Level I think she coped pretty well.

I loved Katie and she was the source of many a nervous breakdown but looking back I think she definitely maxed out her potential. Could have maybe picked up a couple more Grand Slam wins and hovered just inside the top 100 for a bit longer but 80ish was about right in the end.

Her work ethic and discipline on and off the court allowed her to achieve what she did. I remember that at one time she was top of the WTA fitness test charts. She was a very clever girl and enjoyed studying, but also recognised tennis wasn't forever.

It's perfectly possible to study alongside tennis, it's just whether the player can be bothered doing that in the downtime. If top players have hours to do media and sponsor commitments, as well as have other interests and learn languages etc..., players down he chain have time to read some books.

RJA · Hall of fame

PaulM wrote:
Given she made her a Wimbledon debut the same day she sat an A-Level I think she coped pretty well.

I loved Katie and she was the source of many a nervous breakdown but looking back I think she definitely maxed out her potential. Could have maybe picked up a couple more Grand Slam wins and hovered just inside the top 100 for a bit longer but 80ish was about right in the end.

Her work ethic and discipline on and off the court allowed her to achieve what she did. I remember that at one time she was top of the WTA fitness test charts. She was a very clever girl and enjoyed studying, but also recognised tennis wasn't forever.

It's perfectly possible to study alongside tennis, it's just whether the player can be bothered doing that in the downtime. If top players have hours to do media and sponsor commitments, as well as have other interests and learn languages etc..., players down he chain have time to read some books.

I am not going to dispute much of that and it may well have been the right decision for Katie; although I am pretty sure that taking a degree in law probably entails more than reading a few books

There is however this naive belief among many that there is no possible downside to pursuing a professional tennis career while also carrying on with education to a serious level. The vast majority of top players are single minded and heavily focussed on their tennis careers. They tend to be the players who put those extra hours in on the practice court and in the gym day in day out and who are always striving for ways to improve their game. It also about mentality, continuing your education in order to give you options if tennis works doesn't work out might be perfectly sensible but it is also an admission that you doubt whether you are good enough to make it. The best players don't think like that, they get to the top because they don't see failure as an acceptable option.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Vera Zvonereva managed to get a degree in International Economic Relations at a top university while playing top level tennis.

Quite a few other players did/are doing similarly.

Not saying it's easy, or common, but it's perfectly possible and does not imply that they are taking time from their tennis and so would otherwise do better at tennis.

Add: they are not doing it as a 'back-up' plan, so it's not to do with failing with not being an option, but out of interest, passion and feeling that it's part of what they want to do (Gasquet, Petkovic, etc. all talk quite animatedly about their studies - it didn't detract form their tennis, I believe, just rounded it out. Although quite accept that many don;t want to follow that path and that's fine too of course . . .). NB but do not accept at all that players will be better if they drop out of A levels/Bac/high school)

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Tuesday 27th of January 2015 08:17:50 PM

Spectator · All-time great

I don't think one can ever generalise. I have a friend who can handle a very high flying business career while also doing more athletic stuff than most of us would do given all the time in the world ... and take good long vacations and enjoy other hobbies at the same time. He has the gifts to do this. Another person, without his combination of gifts, might struggle to do well in business if he or she tried to do the same combination of different things. Same with Ms O'Brien: like others, I think she got all she could out of her talents ... it's just that she had several talents and used more than one at a time.

My only quibble, as noted above, is with the "all it took was a bit of discipline." Suspect many players could be quite disciplined but still not manage that combination.

RJA · Hall of fame

Coup Droit wrote:
Vera Zvonereva managed to get a degree in International Economic Relations at a top university while playing top level tennis.

But Zvonereva is a player who never made it to the very top, she was a fine player who had a good career but aside from in doubles she never won a Slam (only made it to the QFs or further on 6 occasions) and only won one WTA Premier event.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

RJA wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:
Vera Zvonereva managed to get a degree in International Economic Relations at a top university while playing top level tennis.
But Zvonereva is a player who never made it to the very top, she was a fine player who had a good career but aside from in doubles she never won a Slam (only made it to the QFs or further on 6 occasions) and only won one WTA Premier event.

If we are only talking about Slam winners, we will have a very small sample pool.

Katie O'Brian, with the best will in the world, was not a world class 'top' tennis player.

Zvonereva, however, got to WTA 2, in singles.

I think that anyone who makes it to number two in the world counts as having made it 'to the very top'.

indiana · Tennis legend

I think that Spectator is on the button with : "I din't think one can ever generalise".

Katie might have been such a personality that did max out or at least close to max out on her tennis ability. But maybe not ...

Assorted particular player supposed examples prove nothing.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Jeezo, if making it to #2, being a Grand Slam finalist twice and semi finalist twice, and winning 12 tour titles include Indian Wells isn't making it to the top of the game then you are limiting your pool quite a bit.

Sarah Borwell's view is to keep your options open until such time as you actually are breaking through, so for Laura that was in her early teens, for Heather it was at 17. Laura did her GCSE's, Heather started her A-Levels and had college options until she won the US Open and decided to focus on tennis 100%. That makes sense but I agree with RJA that it's easier discussed than said, because what does it mean in practice, winning a couple of 10ks? And maybe you would be winning those 10ks earlier if you weren't still going to school full/part-time. So it's difficult and impossible to generalize.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the top players should be studying alongside tennis (players who have outside interests are free to do what they want, if Petkovic would rather read books than take selfies and do some modeling that's up to her, doesn't make her a worse tennis player for it), but that in your formative years there's nothing to stop you continuing your studies (and of course most academies have education as part of their programme). If you are ready to actually make a career out of tennis at 16, 17, 18 then by all means focus 100%, but it's becoming wholly apparent that the generation of British kids who are dropping out of school are still going next to nowhere in the grand scheme of things.

So actually I wouldn't say Zvonereva is the sort of example we are really looking at here. It's just an example of it being possible to be done, and with outside commitments top players have arguably less downtime, although their surroundings and general standard of living will make things much easier.

Federer, for example, dropped out of school at 16, we have kids basically being advised to drop out at 14 despite having achieved practically nothing even on the domestic circuit (which is hardly an indicator of future success anyway). I don't see any reason for our juniors not to have a few GCSE's, which is sadly the case with a worrying number of them (particularly on the boys side).

Throw enough eggs at the wall and eventually you will get one that doesn't break - is that really what we want?

-- Edited by PaulM on Wednesday 28th of January 2015 08:32:54 PM

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Whether adult players continue their studies alongside tennis is obviously a personal choice and reflects the interests and personality of the player but, as I said earlier, IMO does not need to impact upon their tennis development. But I couldn't agree more with PaulM regarding juniors. Kids from eastern Europe seem to drop out of education in any real sense quite early and sadly that is the model that UK kids seem to base themselves on. Those from most other countries rarely give up on education until the normal end of the secondary section, somewhere around 16-18yo. Even if they are studying on-line/via tutors they normally follow a full curriculum. HPC coaches, usually with no experience of tour coaching and the standards required, advise kids to leave school and focus on their tennis at ridiculously young ages and then most of them do the bare minimum of subjects aiming low on the grade front. I find it truly shocking.