I think we all have fantasies about our dream careers. Something we showed a little bit of aptitude and passion for, but were never realistically going to get paid to do. The rise of reality talent shows suggests this question – could I have made it? – sits inside an awful lot of us.
For me, I did some stand-up comedy in college alongside a few people who have gone on to make a living in the comedy/entertainment world. I was good but I knew I’d never have enough strings to my bow to achieve much more than getting laughs from a crowd of peers who shared all of my cultural references. But getting the opportunity to tell jokes while giving speeches at weddings over the last few years, and getting brilliant feedback stirred up the old feelings of – could I have made it? Or at least, should I have tried?
This long-winded introduction is all to make the point that when reading Chasing Point, the story of a 34 year old man’s attempts to play professional tennis, I cannot emphasis enough how much I wanted Howe to succeed. I wanted to stop reading after each loss – and unsurprisingly there are a hell of a lot of them – and I genuinely smiled at each moment of success.
Howe had been a very good tennis player but, by his own account, not good enough that a career in the game seemed inevitable or even likely. He continued to play in tournaments into adulthood and used tennis as a way to see the world – combining holidays with entering some local tournament.
At 34 however, Howe decided to give the game one last shot. The book covers a year spent mostly on the Futures tour, the third rung of professional tennis, where players fight it out for a tiny number of ATP Tour points with a view to moving on to Challenger Tour and ATP Tour tournaments. Howe set himself the challenge of winning a solitary ATP Tour point that would give him a World Ranking and access to the ATP Tour. To achieve this, he would need to win at least three consecutive games against typically much younger players who were trying to launch a career in the game.
Chasing Points exposes the incredibly unglamorous life of the majority of players who try to play tennis professionally. Trailing across Continent’s, sleeping in crappy hotels, paying to enter tournaments and having to win three consecutive games to see any return (either financially or in Tour points), Howe paints a picture of young men unable to let go of a dream until they had no other choice. It’s the dual nature of the story that makes Chasing Points so interesting – it’s not just Howe’s journey but also an insight into the struggles of thousands of others on the way up or the way down as they try and try to make it as professional tennis players.
The book has been published 10 years after the season it chronicles. It’s therefore really interesting to be able to know what eventually happened the various characters Howe meets along the way. The majority end up drifting into obscurity with some never playing another professional game after Howe beats them.
Howe’s ambitions were relatively modest and highly personal in nature – there’s almost no reward for being ranked the 1,200th best player in the world. But it’s this personal satisfaction that makes the challenge worthwhile – Howe set his sights on something and commits to trying whatever he can to achieve it. It’s not a tale of extreme sacrifice – Howe spends a bit of money on the quest but he isn’t poor. It’s not a tale of extreme obsession – Howe doesn’t destroy relationships or his health (in a major way) to achieve his goal. It’s not a tale of life changing moments or triumph against all the odds. Instead it’s the story of what success means to each of us and the satisfaction of the journey. It speaks to that desire to never give up on our dreams and never stop doing what you love.
Chasing Points is a really enjoyable read. Howe tells an interesting story and he tells it well. There is a real risk of repetition as each tournament blends into another but Howe gets the balance right – sometimes telling a game in lots of details, sometimes simply mentioning that he lost 6-2 6-2. Overall I’d highly recommend it for any sports fan or anybody who asks themselves am ‘I too old to try and live my dream?’.
As a 34 year old man who is writing this review in Brussels Airport on the way home from a work trip, in the breaks between taking work related phone calls, I can’t help but reflect on those long-ago dreams of stand-up comedy. If I end up attempting an open-mic night anytime in the next few months, Greg Howe is getting the blame.
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