Tennis history is filled with players that have shown bursts of virtue early in their careers, but many, for different circumstances, became nothing more than a forgotten name as they quietly faded in the lone path of retirement.
In many cases, an injury can be the one to blame for taking a player’s physical abilities. Others are held back due to a weak mental strength that kept them from enduring the long and challenging journey to become a professional. Also, numerous players have been forced to leave the sport aside due to the lack of financial means to pay the expenses in an essentially self-funding career.
All of these are common narratives in the tales of once promising players.
In an exclusive interview, David Souto, a young Venezuelan, who was considered to be among South America’s most talented players, helps interpret and analyze the key points which factored in the downfall of his once emerging career.
A Crushed Dream: David “The Panther” Souto
The first time I watched Souto play, he was just seven years old. I had recently joined a performance squad that trained with a group of well-experienced coaches in my native city of Caracas.
It was my second day of training. I had arrived early for my warm up when I saw this funny-looking kid wearing a Nike black cap slightly tilted to the side, he was utterly crushing the ball with a blue Wilson racquet.
I carefully observed him, amazed by the amount of potential. But what impressed the most is that he possessed the two underlying tools that distinguish a talented player from the ordinary: a natural backhand and an excellent impact point on his returns of serve. No matter how good a coach is or how much a player trains, these are qualities that are built in a player’s DNA.
I walked up to my coach, who at the time was in charge of Souto’s development, and asked him who the kid was.
He looked at me and gave a straightforward answer: “Just remember what I’m going to tell you today. That lefty is going to be Venezuela’s next big thing.”
He was not far from the truth.
As an under-12 David Souto, was ranked as South America’s #1 and the world’s second-best tennis player. In 2004, the 11-year-old talent caught the eyes of big sponsors when he reached the finals at one of the world’s most prestigious junior tournament, the Orange Bowl. He lost in three sets against Australian prospect Bernard Tomic.
By the age of 13 and still ranked second in the world, Souto faced Tomic yet again in their second Orange Bowl final.
To put everything into perspective on how important this junior competition is, here is a short list of some of the players who have won the Orange Bowl and later continued to have a successful professional career:
-Bjong Borg (1971 U-16)
-John McEnroe (1976)
-Ivan Lendl (1976 U-16)
-Guy Forget (1982)
-Jim Courier (1987)
-Magnus Norman (1990-U-14)
-Tommy Haas (1992 U-18)
-Olivier Rochus (1995 U-18)
-Paul-Henri Mathieu (1996 U-18)
-Andy Murray (1999 U-12)
-Juan Martin Del Potro (2002 U-14)
-Bernard Tomic (2004-2007 U-12-14)
-Dominic Thiem (2011 U-18)
Souto referred to his early success as a life-changing moment:
“After that, everything changed in my life.
“Two months after my first Orange Bowl final, Nike called me, and I signed my first big contract, all of a sudden it started to be a different life for me.
“It changed so many things; I began practicing twice a day six days a week, behaving like a professional when I was only 12.”
Although many good things came along with Souto’s success, people’s expectations grew higher than imagined, creating a considerable amount of pressure that would withstand alongside Souto throughout his entire career.
“I started to feel a lot more pressure.
“People in Venezuela started to compare me with Nicolas Pereria, who was and still is the best tennis player in Venezuela’s history.”
It was a difficult standard Venezuelan people were setting for Souto, as Pereria, who now works as a tennis commentator for ESPN, is to date the best-ranked player in Venezuela’s history. He reached his highest singles ATP-ranking on July 22, 1996, when he ranked as the world’s #74 player. Among his best victories, Pereira defeated world #3 Stefan Edberg in straight sets in the first round of the Queen’s Club tournament in 1989.
Nonetheless, aged 14, Souto won his first professional match, and became at that time the youngest player in history to be recorded in the professional rankings.
However, in the mists of his junior achievements, his rise was abruptly put to a halt, as a mild chest pain during a tournament turned to be a life-threatening heart condition, where doctors urged his family for immediate surgery to save the young talent.
“I was only 14 years old and in the middle of a tournament I had a chest pain. At first, doctors didn’t even know what it was. My family was terrified.
“One month later, doctors called to tell us that if I didn’t have a heart surgery immediately, I would die that same night.
“Everything was going so fast, imagine I was 14 years old, a big tennis prospect, everything was going so well, and out of nowhere, this happened.
“But, can you believe the toughest thing for me about the whole situation was that when doctors said if we went along with the surgery, I wouldn’t be able to play tennis ever again? I mean, I wasn’t going to be able to play any sport.
“So I remember I told my mom that if I couldn’t play tennis, I preferred to die, I really said that.”
At first, Souto’s family agreed to go along with the surgery, but as the 14-year-old entered the operating room, a close friend and coach prevented the procedure to take place, pleading Souto’s family to opt for alternative medical options, which at the end, proved to be successful.
After a long year of recovery, the 15-year-old went back on track. He won a tournament that catapulted him inside the top 10 juniors in the world.
Sponsors again rushed to embrace the Venezuelan with new contract deals. The gifted left-hander was healthy, and big businesses wanted to ensure they had a piece of what would potentially give them a hefty financial return.
However, Souto again acknowledged, that even though he was encouraged by his uprise, he felt how the enormous burden of meeting people’s expectations was slowly climbing onto his shoulders.
“By the end of that year, a lot more elements emerged that in the end made me feel more and more pressured.
“Now I had a manager; my parents started to see tennis as my future, as my job.
“At 15 years old, I moved to Spain, to live alone, so that I could train and be surrounded by the best, but to be honest, I didn’t want to go.
“My whole life seemed to depend solely on tennis.
“I had to make crucial decisions so early in my life. Even now, with everything I’ve lived, I feel like I’m 30 years old, and I’m only 24.
“I just lived so many things when I was way too young.”
Pressure aside, his skills and results kept people assuming he was an unstoppable force.
Aged 17, Souto rapidly ranked himself among the world’s top 350 professional players, winning four future level tournaments out of 21 he competed in.
However, his rise was put on hold after an elbow injury forced him to stop competing for six months.
“It was another difficult moment in my career since it was my first injury that was actually tennis related.
“I had a stress fracture in my arm, due to so much practice and pressure.
“It was tough, because it happened when I was going up in the rankings, and unfortunately it hindered my development.
“But I was playing so well, and everything was going pretty good, I embraced the injury as part of what I thought would be a long career, so I kept doing everything to come back even stronger.”
Fully recovered, Souto was back on the professional tour. He battled through the lower tier of the circuit, winning numerous Future level tournaments. But it was in late November 2013 when the 21-year-old made an impressive breakthrough in his career. He reached the semifinals at the Guayaquil Challenger, a $75,000 prize money tournament, which moved him the #208 slot in the professional rankings. The achievement allowed Souto to participate in his first Grand Slam event, the 2014 French Open.
In his debut, he lost 6-2, 6-2 against Andrey Kuznetsov in the first round of the qualifying draw, but Souto had accomplished a milestone; he was the second Venezuelan in the last 17 years to take part in a Grand Slam.
Everything seemed headed towards the right direction. The Caracas native had grasped his best career ranking while high-profile brands, Lacoste sportswear and Babolat tennis equipment, were backing him financially; it was just a matter of time for the “Panther” to join the top names in the international spotlight.
However, in September 2014, the same year of his Grand Slam debut, the elbow injury emerged to haunt him once again, forcing him to stop for a year in one of the most pivotal moments of his professional career.
“This was devastating news.
“I had to have surgery to fix my elbow because I was able to hit every groundstroke pain-free, I just couldn’t serve, it was too painful.
“At the time, I trusted doctors. They told me that after the procedure, the elbow would be in perfect conditions.”
With patience, he again embraced his recovery looking forward to achieving the goals he had set as a professional player.
But sponsors did not display the same amount of persistence. As Souto’s career gradually regressed, companies would stop backing the Venezuelan, a factor that would have significant influence in Souto’s future.
“Tennis is a business, every sport is a business, people behind it see it as a business.
“If you as a player agreed to accomplish specific contract objectives and you can’t fulfill them by the end of the year, your contract ends, and when that happens, you won’t have money to keep playing, it’s as simple as that.
“That’s what makes tennis so difficult because other sports give you the luxury that if you get injured, you can be out for three or four months, and the team or organization keeps paying your salary. But in tennis, that doesn’t happen, if you get hurt, you lose your rankings, and if you lose your rankings, you lose your contracts.
“For example, 2014 was the last year I had big contracts. But I got injured and couldn’t achieve my contract goals. So all the brands just decided to break the deals.
“So when I came back to play again in 2015, I started with no financial backing, making everything worse.
“With no sponsors, I had to use my savings; that equaled more pressure, considering only 100 players actually earn money from the sport.”
In his comeback during the 2015 season, as sponsors drifted away, Souto rushed his recovery timetable to be able to play in a crucial Davis Cup tie against El Salvador. The event was set for national broadcast, an opportunity that would help attract new potential sponsors.
It seemed worth it, as he clinched both his matches helping his team to go through to the next round.
But a month later, as Souto jumped back onto the circuit, he was served what would be the final blow in Souto’s career as doctors revealed he had aggravated the elbow injury, only this time, they were clueless to the diagnosis.
“Doctors didn’t and still don’t know what I have.
“They don’t know if I need another surgery, if I need to do more rehab, they don’t give me any options to solve the problem.
“Some of them even told me that I’m all right, that I can play, that I don’t have anything.
“Other doctors said I have to stop playing because my elbow is shattered.
“It’s difficult when you don’t even know what to do because no one tells you anything, so I felt like I was working for nothing, that I was losing money, so I just decided to stop.”
Souto is now able to reflect on his precipitated development as a tennis player, pointing out details that could have changed his outcome:
“For sure I would go slower, everything was too fast. When you’re a kid, you have to be a kid, you have to go to school, you have to be with your friends, you cannot live a professional life when you’re only 12.
“Now I understand everything has a moment; you can’t be a professional when you’re 12.
“I started too early. I wasn’t ready, I was just a kid.
“I started playing tennis because I loved the game and when that changes and you start playing for others and not for yourself, everything goes down the gutter.
“When you play for money, for your parents, when you don’t play because you don’t love the game everything starts to be complicated.
“So sometimes I think it’s a possibility that pressure could have caused my body to be more vulnerable to injuries. But I also started training like a pro since I was a kid, so I think my body just wore down over time.
However, Souto acknowledges that his love for the sport has not diminished even in retirement:
“I still love tennis, I always watch it on television, and I like to watch people play, and even sometimes I go and have hit.
“But it was too many years that I treated tennis as my job, it stopped being something that I enjoyed so much as a kid.”
Souto is only 24 years old, and distant in his thoughts there is still the possibility of returning to the tennis courts and try to fulfill the Venezuelan prophecy:
“At the end of my career I have to admit my mind collapsed, injuries, pressure, everything put together just made me feel overwhelmed.
“For the first three or four months I stopped playing, I didn’t even want to touch a racquet, I just wanted to do something different.
“Right now I don’t know if tennis is done for me, but I want to believe it’s done because to be honest I’m mentally exhausted.
“The day that I announced my retirement, I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
“Now I just want to live, be a normal guy for a while, and if later on, I fully recover from my elbow injury and find sponsors that are willing to back me, of course that I will consider coming back, but for now I don’t miss playing that much.”
Since his retirement, Souto has dedicated his time to promote tennis in his native city of Caracas. He’s dictated lectures on guiding parents to help them let their kids fully enjoy the game of tennis.
Writers’ note: Personally, as a player, I wasn’t one of the talented bunch. But I dropped out of school at the age of 14 to join a national tennis program in the pursuit of a dream. I’m satisfied I was able to reach an ATP ranking of 671 throughout a seven-year career and honored that was able to be a part of the Venezuelan Davis Cup team in 2010 at the age of 22.
Some may not be too impressed, but I challenge them to go out there and live the difficulties players must go through in the lower tiers of the game; the long travels, terrible hotels, playing in dangerous countries, the countless hours of training; pressure all around as family/friends question your life decisions; The disheartening feeling you get every time you lose, thinking if professional tennis is the right choice while also figuring out how to find a way to cover your expenses.
But those are just the issues that surround a player outside the tennis court. I must agree with Andre Agassi’s thoughts on how difficult and lonely this sport is:
“Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players – and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer’s opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis, you stand face-to-face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They’re inches away. In tennis, you’re on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement….”
– Andre Agassi, Open
Nonetheless, professional tennis is a school of life that not many have the chance to experience. It provides you the tools that will help you endure any difficulties presented on an everyday basis.
To this date, every retired professional tennis player that I personally know has been successful in his life after playing this beautiful but sometimes devastating sport.
