Diary of a tennis pro’s journey: “Your doubles partner – Roommate, Friend and Opponent”
The tennis pro journey can feel isolating especially as tennis is an individual sport. From playing alone to managing travel, schedules, meals, and recovery, most aspects of the professional tour are solitary. However, players find ways to create shared experiences, like rooming with others to help with loneliness and expenses.
In this series of ‘behind the scenes’ blogs, we’ve enlisted our own touring WTA tennis pro, Kelley Keller, to reveal the ups, downs, challenges and triumphs of her journey as a professional tennis player. Kelly will be sending us weekly updates on everything she encounters as she works her way up the WTA rankings in her quest to become one of the best tennis players in the world (and have some fun along the way).
Choosing the right roommate is key, as the wrong dynamic can add stress. A good fit means sharing expenses, warm-ups, travel, meals, and possibly even a doubles partnership. But, things can get tricky when you have to face your roommate on the court, turning a shared experience into an awkward one. I think most players can agree this is far from ideal.
The moment you see your draw on the ITF website, the site where all match times and updates are posted, and realize your opponent is your roommate and doubles partner, the air gets tense. Awkwardness sets in, and suddenly you’re wondering if you should still warm up together, share meals, or, jokingly, even sabotage them, though you never would. Once you’re on court, it’s all about business—no cheating, no excessive yelling, just pure competition. After the match, it’s a test of character to leave competitive egos behind and try to maintain the friendship.
Friendships on tour are close because of the shared challenges of the physical, emotional, mental, and financial realms. For those who love to be social, these connections develop through dinners, hotel breakfasts, warm-ups, and meeting new people via mutual friends or Instagram DMs, which is how warm-ups are usually coordinated with people you don’t know playing at the same time as you. Over time, most players at your level are competing on the same travel schedule, which involves qualifying starting every Monday and main draw singles and doubles starting Tuesday or Wednesday, you’re bound to compete against people you know, and while it’s uncomfortable, this is your career and passion, so you can’t let anything get in the way of that.
Rivalries are created this way. They are defined differently by everyone. Whether it’s the person you always seem to draw over and over again, the opponent that you always seem to play a three-set thriller against, or that player who somehow knows how to exploit all of your weaknesses, or the player you are so evenly matched with that a few points here and there define the entire match because it is so tight. For me, I remember all of my rivalries from different points in my career. I remember my junior rival who would always bring out the worst version in me. She would cheat, yell in my face, push the ball, and never make an error. It drove me crazy and she knew it. We always had a three-set battle. She quit before college, but 14-year-old me trained extra hard every day to beat her. I remember my college rival. Our teams always played, so we always got a shot at each other. We pushed each other to play our best, this time with the pressure of the team on our backs. My pro rival always finds a way into my head. Rivals are special. They push you and show you just how badly you want to improve or not. You can never underestimate someone who knows how to play in the not-so-glamorous conditions of low level professional tennis.
Whether through rivalries, camaraderie, or simply sharing a room, these connections are what make life on tour special. Even at lower levels, we share stories about our matches just like the Big 3, whose rivalries are famous both on and off the court. Their rivalries are famous across the game and across sport. They played epic matches that pushed one another to the maximum on court, yet they stay great friends off the court. They will always tell stories of their matches, just as we do at the lower levels. Ultimately, these relationships are what make the journey in tennis unforgettable.
Kelly Keller is a recent graduate from Arkansas University where she played on the tennis team for 5 years and is now giving it her best in the toughest environment of all, the WTA Tour.
Follow Kelly’s results on her WTA profile
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