No frills, no fans, no cash
The minor leagues of tennis is a netherworld that players often navigate alone
Less than a half-hour after a crushing defeat in front of two spectators, Aleksandra Wozniak paced the hallways of the municipal tennis centre in Dothan, Ala., pleading on the phone with an airline representative.
Wozniak, a former top-25 player, had hoped to stay longer at the small tournament, but the loss forced her to immediately arrange a cheap 6 a.m. connection back home to Montreal. Once there, she would prepare anew for the next small tournament a week later in Charlottesville, Va., another lonely stop on a punishing minor league tennis tour.
In Dothan and Charlottesville, Wozniak, 29, competed alongside a special stratum of players struggling to claw their way out of tennis’ underappreciated lower rungs. Among those players is Fanny Stollar, a statuesque, 18-year-old Hungarian with hopes of joining the sport’s elite.
Stollar and Wozniak are at distinct stages in their careers. One is a rising prospect, the other a veteran making a comeback.
But their goal — to play regularly on the WTA Tour — is the same, and for now they share a platform on the International Tennis Federation Pro Circuit, the junior varsity of professional tennis, where purses are too small to earn a living.
“This is not where I want to be,” Stollar said in late April in the small lounge area of the Boar’s Head Sports Club in Charlottesville. “But I have goals. This is where I have to be right now to reach them.”
Players on the Pro Circuit compete at remote stops such as Dothan; Charlottesville; Andijan, Uzbekistan; and Yuxi, China. At any given time, 70 such tournaments may be taking place around the globe, with more than 2,000 players competing desperately for their hotel money, or less. Tennis distributes about $280 million (U.S.) in prize money each year, but 60 per cent of that goes to the top 1 per cent of the men on the ATP Tour and women on the WTA Tour, according to the International Tennis Federation.
On the Pro Circuit, there are usually only a few spectators standing courtside, or sitting on folding chairs. There may be a couple of line judges but no ball kids — the players pick up their own balls and towels, and no one will hold an umbrella over them.
The travel costs for the players can be staggering and the logistical arrangements often self-made, adding layers of work and worry to a demanding profession.
“I went to Australia in January and played three tournaments,” Wozniak said. “I spent 15 grand.”
Wozniak took in roughly $6,500 in prize money before taxes at those events, including a first-round loss in the Australian Open qualifying draw. (Serena Williams, the champion, won roughly $2.8 million.) Wozniak’s trip was a net loss. It was the same in Alabama, where she received $189 before taxes — minus the $40 entrance fee, of course.
This is a player who once beat Williams and was ranked No. 21 in the world in summer 2009. After a series of injuries, Wozniak has tumbled to No. 317, but refuses to give up.
In late April, Wozniak, Stollar and a few dozen other women gathered in Charlottesville for a $60,000 claycourt event — meaning the total prize money awarded to players is $60,000 ( just a tick below the $36million purse at the U.S. Open).
There are several levels of Pro Circuit tournaments, ranging from $15,000 to $100,000; all are sanctioned by the ITF in conjunction with the local tennis federations. But they are separate from the more lucrative WTA Tour tournaments (or ATP Tour on the men’s side). Everyone wants into the WTA events, but players must first attain a certain ranking, and to do that they turn to the Pro Circuit.
Stollar arrived in Charlottesville two nights before the tournament and bunked in a private home on the outskirts of the college town, along with her friend and fellow 18-yearold player Usue Arconada. They also roomed together in Dothan.
The system of housing — club members often offer their homes to the players — is free. But the two women found themselves in a remote, cold house in the woods, so the next day Stollar booked them a hotel room, splitting the bill to reduce costs.
That day Stollar took an Uber car to the club, where she met Federico Rodriguez, her coach at the time, for practice. Now ranked 212th, Stollar had zoomed up 86 places in the rankings to a career-high No. 201after her family hired Rodriguez, a highly respected coach.
In April, Stollar notched her most significant victory yet, beating Elena Vesnina, ranked 14th at the time, at a WTA event in Charleston, S.C. But the partnership with Rodriguez ended in June, when Stollar, after some back and forth and intervention from her mother, hired Adam Altschuler to help her prepare for Wimbledon’s qualifying event.
Because of her promise and age, Stollar has all the things Wozniak does not, including a travelling coach, a full-time agent in Matthew Fawcett of Creative Artists Agency, endorsements from Nike and Babolat, and a token financial contribution from the Hungarian tennis federation.
Stollar’s mother, Yvette Varga, and her father (and first coach), Tibor Stollar, once handled all of her logistical arrangements.
They chose the tournaments she played in, organized her schedule and arranged flights, trains, hotels and food. Now, Varga simply handles the flights while Fawcett books the lodging — unless, of course, his client overrules him and checks into a hotel.
“It was too cold,” Fanny Stollar said of the housing in Charlottesville. “We were shivering.”
On the Pro Circuit, every dollar is counted, every taxi fare carefully considered and every meal tempered by the expense. Varga estimated that it costs $100,000 per year to get her daughter from tournament to tournament, and double that if you have to pay for a travelling coach.
A first-round loser in leafy Charlottesville takes home only $533, barely enough to cover a plane ticket — that is, if the player is flush enough to fly. Elena Bovina, a Russian formerly ranked 14th, is attempting a comeback and drove her minivan 131⁄ hours from Dothan to Char
2 lottesville. Not surprisingly after her gruelling journey, she lost in the first round of qualifying, and earned nothing.
Like Stollar, Wozniak travels by plane, but she does it all alone. There is no travelling coach, agent or trainer to share the burden with her, to support her on lonely nights in tiny towns, to celebrate a big victory or just help her carry her luggage.
Until May, when the Iris the Visual Group, in Montreal, renewed a modest sponsorship deal to pay for flights and hotels, Wozniak had no significant endorsements, and she no longer receives money from Tennis Canada.
She once had it all, but when her rankings caved the monetary support mostly evaporated. Now she spends as much time arranging her travel and finances as working on her volley.
Before her first-round match in Charlottesville, Wozniak sat by the front desk of the club and prepared for the competition not by stretching or meditating, but by decorating her racquet face in accordance with her recent contract with Yonex, the manufacturer that provides her with racquets, string and a red bag to carry it all. Wozniak rummaged around and found a plastic stencil, placed it over the strings of her racquet, then took a fat black marker and coloured in the Yonex logo as she chatted amiably.
“You can’t forget to do it or you could lose your sponsorship deal,” she said.
Racquet strings can be another hidden cost. Each tournament provides a stringer, but stringing costs $20 per racquet. Wozniak said she took six racquets and 30 reels of polyester string, also provided free by Yonex, to each tournament. Until this year with Yonex, she was spending $90 per package for gut strings and stringing three to six racquets per match.
Wozniak can detail every aspect of her routine and recall every expense.
She began playing tennis at 3 in Blainville, Que., outside Montreal, so none of this labour is new. In many ways, her current life mirrors her old one as a junior, except that now she is alone.
As a promising youngster, Wozniak was coached by her father, Antoni, a mechanic, who kept their Nissan Micra running years past its normal life expectancy. He drove it across North America and back, seemingly dozens of times, to ferry his daughter to junior amateur tournaments.
Wozniak nicknamed it Mr. Bean’s Car, from the British television show, and said it had 400,000 kilometres on it.
When her father could not travel, Wozniak’s mother took her on Greyhound buses, zigzagging across the southern United States.
“Some of those bus stops were in scary places,” she recalled. “My racquets would be in the bottom of the bus, and I would sit by the window so I could look outside in case anyone took them.”
Eventually, Wozniak made good money on the WTA Tour and in Grand Slam events, where even a first-round exit can be worth $30,000. With more than $2 million in career prize money, she built up some equity. But her current quest to return to the elite level of tennis is siphoning off her accounts in a steady drip.
“This is the third time in my career I’ve had to start from zero,” she said.
“I went to Australia in January and played three tournaments. I spent 15 grand.” ALEKSANDRA WOZNIAK FORMER TOP 25 PLAYER