The Q Word: How to Understand Quitting in Tennis
In the realm of sports coaching, quitting is a taboo subject. As an individual sport, tennis offers players a unique sense of personal accomplishment. But it is also technically difficult and emotionally draining. For talented players, there is an especially high rate of burnout; many great players resent tennis for causing so much grief and many others have an on-again-off-again relationship with the sport.
Parents and coaches have a moral obligation to advocate for their players’ overall wellbeing. When a sense of malaise comes over players whose progress and enthusiasm stagnate, authority figures should initiate the difficult conversation about quitting or distancing. In some cases, these conversations reveal the real reasons why players feel unmotivated or anxious. Common reasons for burnout are social or parental pressures, mental health issues, and off-court struggles. If tennis seems like root of the problem, then parents and coaches have to respect a player’s decision to quit or persevere.
In both sports and society, many people will declare “winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win.” Telling someone to quit could seem like a veiled suggestion that that person is a loser. Certainly, there are instances in which quitting is undutiful, immoral, and unnecessary. But there are also frequent instances in which perseverance comes at enormous costs. For example, bad relationships, dead-end jobs, and meaningless activities. Tennis, for some players and their coaches, can certainly feel like all three of those things.
Although quitting is appropriate in many instances, coaches and players should consider how bad reasons to quit could outweigh good reasons to persevere. For newer players, the sport’s learning curve, costs, and physical requirements may be significant barriers. Intermediate players can be lured away to other activities that offer more excitement at their athletic level. But measuring these reasons to quit against the benefits of playing tennis demonstrates how the sport pays dividends to those who persevere.
After the initial learning curve, tennis offers decades of fun and competitive opportunities for players of different ages and levels. The promise of lifelong friends that share interests is also very attractive. Besides instruction, tennis’ primary expenses are equipment and court fees, but savvy players can certainly keep their budget under $1000 per year (but only after they’ve accrued enough experience). Tennis also has a low rate of injury and is full of physical and cognitive benefits. Studies show that tennis players live longer than other athletes. And for kids, the sport teaches good values like self-reliance, attention to detail, hard work, and sportsmanship.
The irony is that talented players are often the ones with the most legitimate claims against tennis. At higher levels, tennis comes with a lot of pressure and pain. Good players may quit because of the emotional pain of hard losses or the physical pain of overuse injuries. Expectations from coaches, parents, and themselves can also take a toll on mental health. These factors are not always enough to consider stopping, but when they are, players and coaches sometimes convince themselves to keep going because of social stigmas or psychological biases. In other words, they allow bad reasons to persevere to outweigh good reasons to quit.
Does quitting make one a failure? If the reasons for quitting are illegitimate or inexcusable, then yes. Laziness, prematurity (quitting too soon), and fragility (quitting after a small amount of pain or failure) would fall into this category. If players have put in time and effort, and acted resiliently against adversity, then they seem entitled to quit. But they should ask themselves first whether they’ve done enough to justify their decision.
Another bad reason to persevere may be personal relationships. For instance, players that like their coach more than tennis itself may not want to lose or damage this relationship. Another possibility is seen in players that continue tennis for fear of disappointing their parents or the friends that they play with. However, when players sustain misery to preserve relationships, they are likely to foster long-term resentment and tarnish the relationships they are trying to protect. Quitting, though potentially awkward, may keep those relationships amicable over the long haul.
Sunk costs and loss aversion also play into this unfortunate persistence. At some point, players have invested significant time and money in tennis. These are sunk costs; there is no way to recoup these investments. Also, most people find that the pain of loss greatly outweighs the joys of success. Quitting therefore seems to represent a loss that is more painful than the potential gains of switching to another activity. But if the negative costs of continuing are virtually unlimited, how could it be viable to continue?
At the end of the day, quitting is a simple moral calculation: if the good reasons to quit outweigh the good reasons to play, then players should quit. Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be a permanent decision nor is the decision black and white. Some players may need to distance themselves from tournaments and high-pressure environments. Playing in live-ball clinics or private, recreational matches could allow players to enjoy high level tennis without pain or pressure. Players that quit tennis entirely may find other activities that are just as rewarding, or they may come back to the sport months or years later with renewed optimism and enthusiasm.
