*!90100371
*
by Pete Bodo
Did y'all see the recent AP feature on recently retired Amelie Mauresmo? According to the piece, "Mauresmo is dreaming about having a TV show, thinking about becoming a tournament director and preparing to run a marathon." It was probably just another example of language abuse, and you certainly can't hold Mauresmo accountable for the choice of word, but "dreaming" isn't a really good verb to use in this context. A goofy kid with size 13 feet "dreams" about being Roger Federer. That dumpy 13-year old girl "dreams" about being Lady GaGa. I "dream" about being King of the Universe.
The one thing most dreams have in common is that they don't come true. And the one thing that most of the outstanding tennis players who retired before they were bumped out of the game by the combination of creaking knees and a falling ranking have in common is that the afterlife is often a more formidable proposition than they ever imagined.
Actually, the descending order of gerunds (how I loath gerunds!) in that story is kind of interesting: dreaming. . .thinking (about). . .preparing. Dreaming about having a talk show. Thinking about being a tournament director. Preparing for a marathon. There's an ongoing reality-check in that sentence, and we end up with the one thing that really does seem like a nice, natural fit for a healthy young woman who's done little but play tennis all her life and just turned 30. Run a marathon.
We should all keep in mind that there's no law saying you have to re-invent yourself as Diane Sawyer, or even as former San Diego tourament director Racquel Giscarfe, the journeyman player who had a strong entrepreneurial streak and established herself as a legitimate political/promotion force in the game. Not everybody is meant to shed one enormously popular identity in favor of an equally potent one, as did that other French Grand Slam tournament winner, Yannick Noah.
The thing that fascinates me is the extent to which so many great tennis players try to distance themselves from the game when they quit. It isn't like that other similar high-risk, high-reward professions. A violin prodigy who started practicing three hours a day at age 6 is usually still fiddling away at retirement age. The horse-crazy girl who grew up mucking out the barn is out there breeding jumpers, and the former Olympic ice-skater is out there gliding in some ice show, or working with young skaters of the next generation.
One of the great exceptions to ruling gestalt is John McEnroe. Although he once had somewhat painful illusions about his talents as a pop musician, tennis always came first. Has anyone made a smoother, more appropriate, more successful transition to life after the big time? His is a remarkable story. One of the most controversial and frequently reviled pro athletes of our time has emerged as a critical figure in today's game - a eading citizen in TennisWorld and a role model. But shouldn't all these folks, all the Bjorn Borgs, Steffi Grafs, Stefan Edbergs, Monica Seleses and Pete Samprases all end up with similar portfolios? Wouldn't that be. . natural?
Granted, not everyone can be a prominent television commentator. There are only X-number of jobs, and it does require a specific talent. But there are other jobs out there in tennis, or related to tennis - some new ones might even be created, if enough top players had an interest in it. Few of those jobs come close to equaling the pay scale in tennis for a star like Mauresmo, while all of them would demand just as much of her time under much less enjoyable working conditions. Did you see at the end of that AP article how having to spend the entire winter at home in Europe made Mauresmo realize that some aspects of her former life weren't all that bad?
"Having been used to spending part of the winter in the sun playing sport, I felt that," Mauresmo admitted.
Maybe tennis players really do make too much money. Perhaps Mauresmo would be better off if she had to think: Man, I'd better go out and hook up with some academy or club just to keep up the cash flow. I've never focused on the financial motivations and inducements at play in tennis. They exist, all right, but I've found that the players mostly take the money as a given (it's like the air we breathe; there's enough of it out there to keep you from thinking about it). But let's face it - if you've won a few Grand Slams, you're pretty much set for life. Necessity is the mother of, in this case. . .nothing. So something else has to keep you in the game; something like the natural passion McEnroe has for tennis.
Many of you remarked on those two, whopping career-long deals nailed down recently by Maria Sharapova (Nike) and Ana Ivanovic (Adidas). I guess we'll see how those windfalls affect the two stars in the short term; what I'm wondering about here is the long-term effect of the giant nest-eggs gathered by Grand Slam champions these days. How on earth does a 30-year old accustomed to massive paydays recognize the value of, say, a $200,000 per year job (not that they're giving those away, either) that actually entails some responsibility? Maybe wealth is a more inhibiting factor than we like to think. It certainly seems to liberate a player's imagination.
I suppose being a talk-show host is a reasonable aspiration, but isn't it just a little bit like quitting automobile racing after a 20-year career as a pit crew mechanic and deciding to open a yarn shop? France probably has 500 experienced talking heads, many who are younger than Mauresmo and already have a significant measure of exposure and popularity. What, exactly, gives Mauresmo a leg up on them? How many people have remarked: Gee, that Amelile Mauresmo, she'd make one hail of a talk-show host!
Well, if that's her dream, I'm glad to see her pursue it.
I have a rich friend, a guy who had enough substance to feel pressured to do something besides be rich. He was a struggling playwright. Some years ago, he told me, in an amusing moment of insensitivity: Well, if all else fails, I can always become a journalist. . . I smiled and said something banal, but inside I was thinking, How little you actually know of what it takes to succeed at anything, but you'll find out soon enough. He's still struggling to find a niche as a lowly journalist.
!96555709Mauresmo may have good, undisclosed reasons to believe she can succeed as a tournament director, and she certainly said the right things when she rejected the idea of serving as window dressing for some event - a familiar fade to put up there during a press conference. She said she wants to be invested in the job; she wants to "add value." That's a good attitude, but it's never too soon to start working on a game plan. If this is just a back-burner option, she may find herself facing reality check that greeted my writer friend. But at least it's a tennis-related job, although it would have been nice to read these simple words: I want to stay in the game because that's what I do and who I am.
But you can't expect someone to fake that.
The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that great players in retirement don't really understand how difficult it is to start over, how much work it take to succeed at a different career, or how unsatisfying the process can be, compared to the past. They deserve our sympathy for that, although as a group they show very little sign of having learned from their predecessors' or one anothers' mistakes. Mostly, I sense there's a tremendous waste of human tennis potential here and that partly explains how McEnroe was able to waltz right in and virtually take command as the leading figure in U.S. tennis.
Did anyone else notice that, unlike almost every other major champion, McEnroe didn't quit playing and then go off to contemplate his navel for two or three years, popping out every now and then to inform the anxiously awaiting world that he was considering options, like opening a seafood restaurant or designing furniture? He had an art gallery (which grew out of a legitimate, long-standing interest in painting), but even then he still held the racket in one hand and the headset in the other. He understood that easiest way to build a new life is to begin on the foundation of your old one. Very few people get to build their dream houses from scratch, although almost everyone I know fantasizes about it.
This post began as a riff on Mauresmo, but really it's become one about McEnroe. Maybe it's been obvious to y'all all along, but I only now begin to realize how much the guy loved being who he is: a tennis player, a citizen of the tennis community. A guy who simply loves everything about the game. Every once in a while I bump into John in the neighborhood (he lives pretty close to me) or on an assignment and he's always ready to talk tennis, deep tennis, as in "Does del Potro have more talent than Murray?" deep. On the whole, I've noticed that male players simply love to talk tennis much more than women pros do (Billie Jean King is the outstanding exception). But I suppose that's a post for another day.
Meanwhile, Mauresmo has a marathon to run (New York), and in some ways that will be a shorter race than the one that awaits her afterward. Let's wish her luck.