Pro? Am?

I'm pretty sure everyone who watches sports, at some point, has wanted to be a professional athlete. And 99% of those people had delusions of becoming a pro athlete. I'll share when the dream died for me.

We had a weekly tennis club in middle school. We would play on the parking lot behind school with these crappy nets. There were four or five courts, I think, and the courts were arranged in a hierarchy. The worst players were on the far left, the best players on the far right. By the time eighth grade was over, I was the best player on the best court. To me, it stood to reason that I was going to move on to high school, be the best player on the high school team, go to college, become the best player there, then move into the pros. I never said it had any ground in reality.

So my freshman year, I had my first match of my career against Chagrin Falls. I was playing second doubles. One of the opposing players showed up wearing jeans that were a little tight and a little short, and there was a pack of Camel Lights sticking out of one of the pockets. He and his partner proceeded to clean our clocks. My pro aspirations ended that day.

I watch a lot of pro tennis and follow it pretty closely, and on more than one occasion, I wish I was there on tour. Lately, though, I've been thinking: Is that really the best scenario?

To get to the professional ranks, you have to have a singular focus. How many pro athletes are well-rounded people? It doesn't seem to be a high number. Baseball players, for some reason, seem to be particularly stupid. Pro athletes essentially live on another planet. They have money beyond the dreams of most and do not interact with the common man, usually. They exist separate from the rest of humanity. It's extremely difficult for them to stay grounded. How many athletes go broke soon after retiring because they couldn't manage their money? How many get busted for drugs because they need the rush?

It might not be worth it. A sports career doesn't really contribute much to the human race, all things considered. There might be an Arthur Ashe or Muhammed Ali that comes along every once in a while, but they're rare. I feel like I'm more connected to humanity, better well-rounded, more intelligent than the average professional sportsman. I feel like I have the opportunity to do things to really make the world better, and that I don't have contempt for the common man that rich athletes do.

I'm not saying I wouldn't join the ATP if I was offered the opportunity. I'm also not saying I'm better off the way I am. But perhaps the life of the pro athlete is not as awesome as we'd like to think, and maybe our "common" lives are better than we realize.