London.- Maxime Janvier is a tennis journeyman, one of those players who put all their efforts into becoming professionals in the sport and ended up on the sidelines. Neither yes nor no. He is currently ranked 225 in the world, but he has reason to be happy, having passed the qualifying round at Wimbledon and entered the final draw. The joy was relative, because when L’Equipe asked him questions, they found a bored boy, with a life that is nothing like what he dreamed of and that is more of a burden than anything else: “I really dislike tennis, it disappoints me. When I was younger I didn’t think like that at all. I would never have taken up tennis if I had known that.”
“There is a permanent lack of stability. You can be 50th and the next year 800th in the world. You can’t take anything for granted and there is no protection. I no longer expect anything from this sport“When I was younger, I loved tennis. Today, I find it very unfair,” concluded the still young player.
His case is somewhat extreme, because frustration is not usually so high and its expression is normally somewhat filtered – athletes do not like to show themselves so openly, partly because of what people will say – but it is clear that many tennis players suffer when they are above number 100 on the world list.
27-year-old Maxime Janvier (career-high #170) after qualifying for Wimbledon, cashing in €70k in the process:
‘Home, home!’ [‘The house, the house!’]
He went viral in France for screaming ‘MONEY!’ after his R2 yesterday
(via @QuentinMoynet) pic.twitter.com/t25yUCk93K
— Bastien Fachan (@BastienFachan) June 27, 2024
Roberto Bautista is currently number 125 in the world, but he is an elite player, having been ranked as high as ninth in the rankings. Last year an injury kept him off the circuit for several months.There he saw how every week his points tally added up to zero and his position fell and fell to a place where he no longer had a place in the most important tournaments on the calendar.
“Wow, after being injured and having problems until practically February… I had 500 or 600 points to defend in three months, The truth is that playing with the responsibility that in three months if you don’t do it right, this could end or you could go to 300 or 2002.well, the truth is that it has been difficult,” he explains. That is to say, he found himself in the spring that if he did not manage to achieve results quickly, even after returning from his injury, the bell would ring and he would have to leave forever a sport that he loves deeply.
“It’s something I haven’t said, but I’ve carried it inside. and the truth is that I have done a great job these past few months,” concluded Bautista, who, having made it through two rounds at Wimbledon, will now improve his numbers and will be able to face the rest of the season with a little more oxygen. He will be able to avoid going to low-level tournaments, such as the Futures, and he will not need to be given wild cards…
Because although Bautista is a player with an illustrious career, his record does not win matches by itself. The zone in which he has moved this year in the rankings, from which he is now close to escaping, is in itself a labyrinth full of traps.
“Tennis is very even, there is now a very high level It is very difficult to add points every week. There are times when you don’t manage to win, but I think it is very important to lose well. And that gives you confidence to play at a high level the following week, to get better, to accumulate minutes of competition,” he says.
The Badosa case
Paula Badosa has a master’s degree in these same fields. Like Bautista, she suddenly appeared in a cold zone of the world rankings due to a concatenation of injuries, bad times and adverse results. A Series of Unfortunate Events. He is ranked 98th in the world, although, like Bautista, his good result at Wimbledon will probably help him to establish himself better in the top 100, with all that this entails.
In these positions, changes are constant and there can be huge ups and downs. A good result pushes you up ten places, but failing a tournament that went particularly well for you in the previous year is a burden on your ankle that pushes you back down. World ranking positions are not just an ego contestbut they also indicate which tournaments you can enter and which you can’t. And that’s it.
Badosa gives a brutal representation of what her situation has been like these last few months: “Being out of the 100 is another circuit. First of all, you don’t qualify for the Grand Slams anymore, it’s very difficult financially for players like that. You don’t play on the big courts. In my case, I don’t play in the big matches, which is what I want in the end. Playing those matches is what motivates me,” she explained after beating Fruhvirtova, without many tennis problems but quite angry.
Her analysis of the ranking is similar to Bautista’s, that anxiety of all or nothing. “When I couldn’t find that continuity and the clay tour came up, which was where I had some points, where I was holding on a bit, well obviously I was a little more overwhelmed. And now, knowing that I’ve more or less covered it there, I can play with that peace of mind. And knowing that everything that comes to me now, well, it adds to me,” he said after his first match at this Wimbledon.
There is a tennis part, pure play, but for someone with Paula Badosa’s talent, perhaps the most complicated thing is the emotional part.Once you’ve had a taste of being on top, going back is hard to manage.“You also have to have a great deal of humility and acceptance, because if you don’t have it, it’s impossible to get back there,” says Badosa.
These months, with the serious back injury, all those moments have been going through his head. “Mentally, whether you like it or not, your confidence goes away. It’s something that I didn’t expect either because I’ve always thought that confidence goes away if you lose. But no, When you get a little bit away from the competition, you also feel a little lost and your confidence goes away. “And that also took me a long time to recover. I think my big turning point was when I started the clay court tour. The Madrid tournament hurt me a lot. I was coming off an injury and I was in a bad way, but I think that was my turning point,” says the player.
“Sometimes you have to take the biggest beating to get ahead”she adds, leaving the sentence hanging. Badosa has played few satellite tournaments, she has done everything possible to stay in the main draws, although on many occasions she had quick exits and was not able to score points. “In the end my goal is not to be 90th in the world,” she said recently.
Badosa and Bautista belong to a caste within tennis, those who have reached the top. Others, like Bouzas, are also currently on the cusp of number 100, but in her case, at 21 years old, it is mostly because she is on the rise. She has won two matches at Wimbledon, the first of them by dismantling Vondrousova on the centre court. These are her best days and she repeats one word over and over again: enjoy.
“Because if I don’t enjoy these moments, which ones will I enjoy? I mean, in the end this sport is very hard, unfortunately you lose practically every week, so when there are such beautiful things like this and things that you have been dreaming of for so long, the only thing I can think about is enjoying it to the fullest,” he explains.
Alejandro Moro said something similar last weekend. He has been slowly rising in the rankings, but he is perhaps the one who best knows that place in the classification where you don’t fight for glory but to earn a living.
“I think there are two types of players. Some of us take it a little bit more step by step, little by little. And then there are others who have a couple of good weeks in the year, climb a lot in the rankings. And then with that they hold on for the rest of the year. I think I’m a player who is gradually improving, gradually increasing my level.“He started in futures, he already plays challengers, the next step is to appear in a ranking that will give him access to ATP circuits.
And there, without previews, without small tournaments, without weekends in members’ clubs where tournaments are played that no one attends, you can finally think that it was all worth it.
2024-07-05 04:49:36
#dont #Relevo
