CNN
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Have you heard of any interesting tennis players? You probably aren’t very serious people, due to the nature of their work. But one man can guarantee them.
Michael Costa was once one of the top tennis players in the world, and now he is a successful Emmy-winning comedian. His journey is as unorthodox as it is charming, and he says it was tennis that made him interesting, but he didn’t laugh much at the time.
Kosta ranked 864th in the ATP singles ranking.
“To give you insight into how proud I am of that,” he told CNN Sports.
But as he explains in his new book, Lucky Loser, there’s nothing fascinating about the life of a tennis pro who struggles to make it.
He recalls the tournament in Mexico City. There, I was partnering with a university friend to split the costs of hotel rooms.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m qualified, so I’ll get a free hotel room. Do you want to be with me?” So, I was with the guy who was trying to play, but also with the guy who beat me for some reason.
With many junior trophies winning, his family had to borrow storage units to keep them, but he lived on a shoelaces budget to keep his dreams alive and continue. Costa traveled the world and tried to become an expert on it.
But in the end he ran out of money and confidence, barely making $11,000 on the ATP tour and knew it was time to try something else. “It’s very tough,” he guessed. “It sucks.”
Costa may not have made it that way back then, but the grind of being an aspiring tennis pro was preparing him for a comedian life. “When you’re 864 in the world, you lose a lot,” he told CNN.
“I lost on Monday or Tuesday. It gives five or six days until the next tournament. Instead of getting hooked on my match and the difficult life I chose, I wrote down these ideas, jokes, and interactions I found interesting.
Not only that, he understood that the tennis circuit was an incredible throw through several suspicious facilities in the backwater town.
“You’re alone, you have problems solving,” he said of the similarities between the two professions. “By playing tennis to deal with difficult situations, you prepare yourself for the real world.
“I did a bit, that’s great, and the waitress travels and drops all the glass clothes, or you cut your head or the microphone goes off.
Are there other sports where the losers must give speeches? Tennis players learn to be good communicators. Costa felt he had an advantage over many of the fledgling comedians he met at the start. He thrusts his shirt in, shakes his hands, looks into the eyes and teaches people to be confident.
He said he was a lucky loser and that people who joke about their livelihoods are often completely against it. “Codians are dressed very poorly, many of them are significantly drunk.
When he traded his tennis set for an on-stage set, he brought an athlete mentality to his skills.
“These old cartoons say, ‘Man, when you have a bad set, it seems like you’re just going on, it doesn’t seem to bother you.” And I go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to sit down and be sad about it, I just thought it was time to go practice!”
“The reason I was able to climb the comedy ladder is because I experienced losses and disappointments over and over as a tennis player.”
It’s not that he enjoyed failing in either profession, but he discovers that bad nights on stage are far worse than defeats on the court.
“Physically, emotionally,” he explained. “Being a professional tennis player is more difficult than being a professional comedian. But when you bomb a joke, rejection is personal. When I lost, the opponent worked.
So, are tennis players interesting? Costa thinks that is the case for some, but they can’t show it. He recalls what Novak Djokovic had done at the beginning of his career and stopped him as it only fueled his enemies.
“I think Igaświątek is actually pretty funny, but when you’re number one in the world and everyone is trying to beat you, she’s reluctant to share it,” he said.
“Coco Gouf is very light and goofy for someone who plays at such a high level. I’m very grateful for that.”