“Tennis greats are often known by their given names—Roger, Rafa, Serena—while the rest of us are known by a number: our ranking. Much more than in any other sport, the world ranking determines who you play with, where you play, and how much money you make.” With these few words, devoid of hypocrisy and rhetoric, Conor Niland sums up the hard life of 99% of professional tennis players, those hundreds and hundreds of athletes who continue to move from one place to another on the planet in search of points to improve their ranking, thus being able to participate in more important tournaments with more attractive prize money. Racquet workers who struggle to make ends meet and who continue to play partly out of ambition, partly out of passion, and largely because they started hitting balls over the net as children and have no other prospects in life.
Conor Niland (currently captain of the Irish Davis Cup team) has dedicated a beautiful book to these "second-rate" tennis players, "Almost Making It" (Mondadori, 2026, €20.00, 264 pages. Also available as an ebook). The book begins with a firsthand account: that of the author, a professional tennis player for over ten years, with a world ranking of 129th as his highest score. Conor Niland grew up in Limerick and was Ireland's top tennis player for many years, both as a junior and as a professional. As a young player, he beat Roger Federer—and still has his coach's notes on that match. However, the hoped-for triumphs did not follow.
His career peaked in 2011, when he entered the main draw at Wimbledon and the US Open, losing in the first round on both occasions. In between, there were years of few highs and honest work as a racket craftsman, with a few too many wasted opportunities. At sixteen, Conor Niland was chosen to train with Serena Williams at Nick Bollettieri's famous academy in Florida. Conor, the number one Irish junior, was homesick. Serena, also sixteen, already owned a house, right next to those courts. In short, attending the same tennis academy didn't erase the differences in status, and tennis isn't a sport designed to erase differences, quite the opposite...
With this memoir, Conor Niland introduces us to the exclusive world of professional tennis: a universe in which a few dozen super-rich top players – who travel escorted by large entourages – share the stage with the remaining 99% of players: tennis players who live the circuit in solitude and whose earnings barely cover their expenses.
Niland knows what it's like to be in the locker room when Roger Federer walks in, he's walked the lawns of Wimbledon, and he's savored the excruciatingly sublime feeling of facing Novak Djokovic in the world's largest tennis stadium, Flushing Meadows in New York. He didn't quite reach the top, but during his years on the tour, he's lived experiences and collected stories no sportswriter could ever tell. The result is a unique portrait of the professional tennis circuit, the social and economic dynamics that underpin it, and the many shadowy areas of betting, doping, and often unrewarded sacrifice.
Funny and at times painful pages that offer a privileged and authentic look at the ruthlessly competitive world of tennis, an environment where, apart from the superstars, everyone fights with everyone else and is alone with themselves, as Niland himself writes in the moving lines that bring the book and his career to a close: “I didn't tell anyone at the ATP that I was leaving, I didn't sign anything: I simply stopped showing up at tournaments. No official from the professional circuit contacted me to ask where I had gone. There were hundreds of young people ready to take my place. Serena Williams played her last match at forty, Roger Federer retired at forty-one, but for professional players the average age of retirement is twenty-seven.” Twenty-seven years…and having to start all over again, unless you become, if not Sinner, at least Cobolli, Berrettini, or Musetti.
