The men’s and women’s finals at Wimbledon on July 14th are the biggest events in tennis. They each feature two of the world’s best players competing for the oldest and most prestigious prize in the sport. But at around the same time, a dozen or so other professional tournaments will take place worldwide in far less glamorous settings, including Iasi, Romania and Tianjin, China.
These small-fry competitions are crucial because they cater to tennis’s masses: players ranked anywhere between 100th and 2,000th in the world. They may be lowly ranked, but they are highly skilled. Tennis demands remarkable speed, hand-eye co-ordination and mental fortitude. It is played by some 90m players globally, making anyone in the top 2,000 a stellar talent.
Yet those outside the top 100 rarely feel like stars. Life in professional tennis’s outer orbit is drudgery, writes Conor Niland (pictured). He would know. Between 2005 and 2012, the Irishman tried to escape the “purgatory” of lesser tennis tours. He could only briefly reach the rank of 129. His courtside account of these efforts serves as a crushing reminder of the grist from which sporting greatness emerges.