‘The Cruelest Game’ Examines Tennis As Torture

Professional tennis has a way of breeding misery. It begins with the dream of reaching the No. 1 ranking, but almost everybody falls short. Those who find the promised land feel puzzlingly empty once there. Familial and coaching roles blur. Prodigious children bear the responsibility of feeding and enriching their families. The mechanism through which matches are decided is a torturous maze disguised as a scoring system. Tune in and you may see grown adults reaming out their support staff, family, the chair umpire, and themselves; tearful breakdowns mid-match; balls whacked out of the stadium, into the stands, or occasionally into a tournament employee’s vital organ; rackets thrashed and mangled on the court.

It’s that last image which resides on the cover of Matthew Futterman’s new book The Cruelest Game: Chasing Greatness in Professional Tennis. With decades of covering professional sports behind him, Futterman wondered why tennis seemed uniquely taxing. It’s a question with which he leads off the book: “Why does this game seemingly drive everyone mad?” By the end of its 329 pages, it seems generous to even call high-level tennis a game. Most games are fun. The current generation of top players and their families approach it more like life and death. 

As the tennis press dwindles and players withdraw behind agents and personal YouTube channels, Futterman has pulled off a coup of access. He’s able to ask the top players about their hunts—and the price of their lifelong chase. It can be a bleak scene. Zheng Qinwen tells Futterman about her father taking her on a long car ride, under the guise of her doing a tryout with a new coach, and leaving her behind. The coach had already agreed to take her on; Zheng was seven years old. Tommy Paul recalls seeing parents beat up their children after losses in juniors. Those without generational talent are miserable, forever pursuing the standard of the blessed. The chosen ones often find that standard but also spend a lot of their time being miserable. Oh, and having dedicated their lives to this sport, nobody knows who they are in its absence.