There are almost 2,000 men with an Association of Tennis Professionals ranking. Only 128 of them will make it into a Grand Slam tournament.
As the top few hundred tennis players in the world prepare to compete in the $71 million Australian Open, thousands of others are playing in small tournaments you’ve never heard of to win enough matches to one day play in a Grand Slam event like the one in Melbourne.
He played a lot of soccer and worked on his fitness on the beach, but, when it came to tennis, he mostly served, modeling his motion after Roger Federer’s. After he arrived in the U.S., though, he lived and trained with his cousin Salifu Mohammed, a former touring pro who was teaching tennis in New York, and went on to play Division I tennis for Virginia Tech.
What Asaba is trying to do “The ultimate goal is to get to play all the Grand Slams and be ranked top 50 in doubles,” Asaba told me the first time we spoke, in September 2019. While those achievements may not impress people who follow living legends like Serena Williams and Roger Federer, that level of success is a dream for Asaba. To reach those milestones and more, he would need to travel with a coach, according to many people MarketWatch spoke with for this article.
Asaba hasn’t been able to afford to hire a coach, but he has trained at times with fellow players and their coaches. He worked with one player and coach for a few weeks “on patterns and shot selection,” and he says they talked a lot about the mental part of the game and what to do between points. “It was really helpful,” Asaba recalls.
“You get $3.5 million for winning the US Open, but the winner here makes about $2,500,” says Richard Cutler, who runs the $25K tournament in Houston. Since graduating from Virginia Tech in 2019, Asaba has worked at a New York–based hedge fund. The entry-level job in investor relations provides him just enough money to pay for his travel to tournaments, and his employer is flexible about his vacation days to enable him to compete on the tour.
And of course if you make it into the top 10, you make millions each year. The top-earning man in 2019 was Rafael Nadal, who made more than $16 million, and the top-earning woman was Ash Barty, who made over $11 million. ‘You get $3.5 million for winning the US Open, but the winner here makes about $2,500.’ Richard Cutler, tournament director Courier, now 49 and a commentator on the Tennis Channel, won 23 titles during his career, including the Australian Open and the French Open twice each. Before he turned pro in 1988, he played what were called satellite tournaments, the equivalent of today’s futures. “Back then it was easier. So few people were ranked compared to today. There were 500 ranked players in 1987.
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