Life After Competitive Tennis: The Reality of Finding your New Tennis Normal
Written by Tennis Sisters 👯♀️
October 9th, 2023
300. Growing up we spent an average of 300 days a year playing tennis. That’s 300 days of 3+
hours of training and competing, playing alongside future grand slam champions, future
Olympic gold medalists and the top juniors in the world and in the US. It was 300 days a year of
pure grinding. 300 days that we could have spent with family and friends. 300 days of sacrifice.
There is a study that shows that it takes an average of 59 days of doing something repetitively
for it to become a normal habit. Now multiply those 300 days by 8, 9, 10+ years. Habit falls
short. Tennis becomes second nature. It’s a part of you. A part of your identity, your purpose.
So what happens after it’s all over? What happens when you graduate from college? What
happens when the day comes that you make the decision to stop competing because you are
not going pro? You had put in years of hard work and sacrifices; you don’t want that to go to
waste. But how do you keep playing? What do you do next? How do you find your new normal?
The reality is when we both stopped playing competitively, we took a break from tennis.
Mostly, because we were over it. We went through a phase where we hated playing. We had
put in so many years and for what? We knew nothing came next. Even if we wanted to continue
playing, there wasn’t really a way to do it. One of the biggest issues we felt is that there is huge
grey area in tennis that is not talked about enough. There’s a gap.
The Gap
There are 3 types of players in tennis: professional players, recreational players and the in
between players, the ones who grew up training and playing in the same academies as
professional players but didn’t pursue going pro or whose goal was to play in college. Both
professional players and recreational players have a clearly defined track. The pros play on the
pro tour, the recreational players join adult leagues. But what happens to those in between
players? The ones who didn’t go pro, but are too good for the adult leagues? The moment we
decided to pick our racquets back up, that’s what we struggled with the most.
The Struggle of Finding Ways to Continue Playing
We knew we wanted to continue playing at the high level we were used to but didn’t want to
necessarily compete. Many of the players we grew up training with either went pro, or just
hung up their racquets after college, so playing with them wasn’t really an option. We had
plenty of other friends who played tennis recreationally willing to hit with us, but as fun as just
being on the court is, playing controlled can get old. Sometimes you just want to hit and not
have to hold back. We looked into adult leagues and clinics, but the truth is there wasn’t really
a place for the in-betweeners. We had several invitations to join adult women’s leagues, but we
found they’re mostly geared towards more recreational players, and we didn’t want to be tied
down to a set schedule or deal with the overly competitive nature of those leagues. While the
men’s adult clinics were more welcoming, there was a slight age difference, and we could tell
they would get frustrated trying to keep up with us. Our old academies were mostly focused on
developing juniors. We could train privately with our coach every day, but that can run
hundreds of dollars a week. It’s hard to justify spending so much on training if you are not
competing and earning back on your investment. So what do you do?
Defining the New Normal
We’ve spent the last couple of years trying to define what our new tennis normal looks like. For
us, it’s been a combination of training with our coach and just hitting sessions amongst
ourselves. Fortunately, we do have each other. We realize our situation of being two siblings
who both play at the same high level is quite unique. We don’t take that for granted. While we
have a good routine of playing a few times a week, even then, we’re not sure we have it fully
defined just yet. To be honest, we don’t really think there is a proper new normal. There’s just
the normal that you create for yourself. There are always different ways to play, but the gap is
still there. At the end of the day, you just have to find ways to get back on the court that feel
right to you.
Transitions are never easy, but they’re made even more difficult when there is no clear path.
While we may not have the perfect solution, what we do know is there has to be more in-
betweeners out there like us feeling the same. The more the gap is recognized and talked
about, the closer we can potentially be to finding a new normal. For now, we’re just two sisters
worrying less about defining how to play & just focusing on enjoying the times we get to play.
Love-all,
The Tennis Sisters 💋
