NFL player gave up tennis, turned to football for financial reasons. Top 400 must be paid more.

[HunterST]

I was listening to the Beyond the Baseline podcast, and they had on Jake Elliot, the kicker for the Eagles. His story is a perfect example of why tennis must offer a greater financial reward to at least the top 400 players in the world.

Elliot was, by all accounts, an incredibly gifted athlete. While he played many sports, tennis was his main focus. He did not play football. At half time of a high school football game, he was randomly selected to try to kick some field goals. He had never tried to kick a field goal before, but he was so naturally gifted in terms of coordination and eye/body coordination that he was able to make several difficult shots. The coach saw this and recruited him to play. He, of course, went on to become incredibly successful.

Elliot actually says in the podcast that he was planning to play college tennis but that football was the better financial decision, so he took that path.

This is exactly what the USTA, ITF, and ATP should fear. Incredibly gifted athletes with a passion for tennis choosing other sports because we can’t find a way to pay them a decent amount.

 

[Wander]

Tennis does have a problem in not being as financially viable as many other professional level sports, but it is still by far ahead of any other racket sport so it's not all doom and gloom. Popular team sports by their nature will always have an advantage, I think, in being able to offer good wages for a larger amount of professionals. When you are with a structure where the pros need to win prize money, it's just different. I think there were murmurs about the ATP planning to cut down on the number of pro players but have the smaller number earn more money. We'll see how much of a rework we'll end up with if any in the coming years I guess.

 

[MeatTornado]

As long as there aren't fans for matches of players in the 400s, I'm not sure I understand what the ATP is supposed to do.

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Not many sports will compete with the NFL if the player has the talent to play it and another sport.

We do need to continue to grow the sport though so that tennis is an attractive option. I think we need to continue to spread the game into Asia and the middle east for commercial reasons. Paris and Madrid for mine could get replaced with M1000 tournaments in Asia maybe Toyko & Dubai.

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Not many sports will compete with the NFL if the player has the talent to play it and another sport.

We do need to continue to grow the sport though so that tennis is an attractive option. I think we need to continue to spread the game into Asia and the middle east for commercial reasons. Paris and Madrid for mine could get replaced with M1000 tournaments in Asia maybe Toyko & Dubai.

 

[Bobby Jr]

Elliot was, by all accounts, an incredibly gifted athlete. While he played many sports, tennis was his main focus. He did not play football. At half time of a high school football game, he was randomly selected to try to kick some field goals. He had never tried to kick a field goal before, but he was so naturally gifted..

This is exactly what the USTA, ITF, and ATP should fear. Incredibly gifted athletes with a passion for tennis choosing other sports because we can’t find a way to pay them a decent amount.

For every gifted athlete who can emulate what Elliot did there are 9,999 who can't. Tennis isn't really competing for athletes with other sports, it's competing with normal, predictable, somewhat safe career paths of everyone. When you chose a pursuit in life where only a tiny minority get big sums of money you always risk the chance you aren't among that minority. The chances are that had Elliot chosen tennis he would have been a failure anyway - regardless of how gifted an athlete he is/was.

Tennis is just one of those sports that, unlike NFL, requires every single participant to be great at dozens of small things where being overly substandard in any of them basically is a career killer that often can't be covered by being better at something else. NFL by contrast is hyper-specialised for the most part - most of the participants can focus on the two, maybe three, narrow tasks their role requires. This means it is much, much easier to attract and vet the funnel of talent coming into the sport - often years ahead - through high-school systems, measuring simple actions (speed, strength etc) etc. This is the main reason it's so hard to get people to stick with tennis comparatively (ditto for golf etc). It's not just about money, that is an after-thought in most cases. Most people who ponder out aloud that they could have been the next mid-raked pro (or, a top pro) are actually deluded as to just how hard tennis is at the pro level. They may have been good but you only have to look at how infrequently the "next big thing" or top juniors ever end up proving their worth at the top level of tennis to see how pie-in-the-sky discussions along the lines of "I chose NFL because tennis doesn't pay enough" often are.

 

[Bobby Jr]

*duplicate post*