I think we underestimate what a treadmill it can be for these youngsters who come through early.  All well and good if, like Bouchard, you go straight to the top of the tree.  Then the rewards and excitement of life at the top make it all worthwhile. 

Nearly all these early 'stars' from the age of 7 or 8 live in a fairly small closed world, with limited social life, often outside of a normal school environment and with parents, coaches, national associations constantly analysing, comparing and rating them and plotting out their lives months in advance.  It must be very dispiriting for them then  to find that in early adulthood they have stalled or the path is steeper or not as smooth as they had believed.  Because the tennis world likes to grab them young,  before their teenage years these kids have often stopped doing tennis for love and enjoyment but instead do it as a job without ever having made a conscious decision to do so.  

Although not for everyone, I think that is one of the strengths of the US college system - gives these kids between 1 and 4 years out of the spotlight and away from all those who until that point have had a vested interest in them. A chance to grow up and work out whether life as a professional tennis player is really what they want.  Quite a few of the rising young US women have spent some time at college and all say that breathing space was beneficial to them.  I'm sure it would have been perfect for Oli, although having taken sponsors and, I believe, cut down on formal education he lost his option to do this a long time ago.

I agree, education never harmed anybody and once you've got it, it can't be taken away from you.  It's just that frequently, those around the kids who achieve good things early buy into the argument that they need to push on with the tennis ahead of everything else.  Those peddling this argument are usually looking at their own requirements rather than that of the child eg national associations looking for results/publicity to justify funding, sponsors looking for results/participation in high profile events, coaches looking to improve their own standing. And believe me, these kids do feel the weight of everybody constantly wanting a top performance.

Sim wrote:

 

There is a lot to be said for the US college system, but there are also those who say that the sports have become too large/important in the US colleges and suck up money that could have been used for education instead (someone has to pay for all those scholarships, and whilst college American football may pay for itself with TV coverage and upto 100,000 attendance at games I am sure that is not the case with tennis) so always two sides to every argument.....

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 It is no coincidence that the colleges with the best teams in televised sports (ice hockey, football, baseball, basketball) usually have the best teams in other sports.  This is because the money from these revenue sports is used to fund the whole athletics program including non-revenue sports such as tennis.  And the really top football teams still sometimes generate a surplus of funds which goes back to the university to spend as it sees fit.  

If football did not fund other sports with women taking part (soccer, tennis, swimming, volleyball, track & field) they would not be allowed to offer so many scholarships for their male dominated revenue sports

sherbert wrote:

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I don't know Oli, so I can't say for sure why he is doing it. I know that Neil struggled with the transition from being LTA funded to having to fund himself - and I wonder if that might be the case with Oli. If I'm honest, there have been times when I've wished Neil would give up so we can have a 'normal' life. However, no matter what the situation - even when we have no idea how he's going to fund the next set of tournaments, I don't think Neil has ever even considered giving up.

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It's really interesting to hear your insider's view, sherbert, and I bet it must be a bit frustrating at time.

But, just in general, I do think that Neil is doing the right thing. All his other options (practically) will still be around in 5-10 year's time. But not that of becoming/being a top tennis player (define it as you like).

And, having a certain experience of juniors turning pro, I do think that the worst thing is to end up with regrets (same can be said about life in general, I guess).

There's a french guy that practically no one will have heard of (including the French) called Davy Sum who's retired this year. He's 25 and made it to about WR 500 a couple of years ago. He was doing quite well and then had a sudden illness and, when coming back, got injured (or maybe the other way round). Anyway, it wasn;t actually the illness or injury that was the problem but he said it made him suddenly completely lose his confidence and he was never the same player.

Anyway, the point of this was he says that he has no regrets at all about giving it a go (even though it didn't really work) and no regrets about the injury/illness i.e. he'd obviously rather they hadn't happened but it was just one of those things, outside of his control.

But his really major regret that still eats away at him (and this may well apply to quite a few of our guys) is that he never really gave Challengers a try. He says he was always thinking 'just a few more futures wins, just get a few more points first'. Because you don't have to absolutely nail futures first and quite a few guys do well in challengers anyway. And he can't help wondering how he'd have fared against the 'big' guys, along the lines of 'you never know', might have raised the bar for himself, might have got lucky, might have meant he didn't have the sudden confidence problem etc. etc. etc. And now he'll never know, even though he had the level to at least give it a go.