Jesse Levine - freshman sensation, but wait, he's a pro...

If you are a somewhat serious follower of the game of tennis, you know that most good (professional) tennis players start playing when they are quite young. Most of the guys on my team started when they were anywhere from 7 to 12 years old. I started playing my freshman year of high school. I have learned that I am somewhat of a rarity; I wish I had started playing when I was 6 though so I could be good. But for the sake of making a little rant, let's think back to when Rafael Nadal started playing pro tournaments at age 16. Mario Ancic was about that age when he first started playing pro and beating people too. But it's always easy to dismiss that and be like "Bah, he's foreign, they have a different system, he can just train a lot and developed fast and plays tennis...whatever." Well, it changes when you put it in persepctive. This guy, who doesn't even have an official bio, is tearing up a pro tournament in Delray Beach, where I'm quite sure it isn't snowing. It's crazy to me because he's not even as old as I am, and I'm a sophomore in college. He is a freshman at the U of Florida, and will be one singles on their team this fall.

I was barely ready to play D II college tennis as a 18-19 year old kid...meanwhile there are 18 year old bad asses serving up losses to guys who have been on tour for 8 or 9 years? What? That's insane. Let me put it this way. If I were to go play a full match against the number one player on our team, I would probably lose like 6-1 6-1, maybe even 0 and 0, but I'm being optimistic. Either way, he would beat the crap out of me. He is from Puebla, Mexico and has been playing since he was 9. He's a stud. Anyhow, he played a couple of Futures events (a good comparison would be like the double A affiliate of a baseball team, maybe even a little lower) and he got nailed. Never made it out of the first round I guess. So that means that there are people way better than him but can't make it in the Challenger events (AAA baseball), the real minor leagues, and those are the guys who are still waiting to make it on the real tour. How good must Federer be then?

My coach's son is a tennis pro, and he played on the tour for a little bit. Mostly just challengers. He topped out around #1300 in the world, and he is AMAZING. If Federer can tool anyone in the top 15 without much trouble, and if someone in the top 15 can tool anyone in the top 100 without much trouble on a regular basis, and the #1300 guy is SICK, how does that all work!?