Often times athletes get caught up in the day-to-day grind of being a tennis player. It’s all too easy to get swept up in results, forgetting to truly appreciate the process. But tennis is so much more than just a sport; it’s an avenue for learning critical skills and lessons that can be applied to countless situations throughout the course of a lifetime.
For Marianne Werdel, former world No. 21 professional tennis player and current high-performance coach, the life-lessons she learned from tennis will forever be ingrained into her personality.
Growing up in Bakersfield, California, there was no shortage of talented tennis players for Werdel to learn from. She spent a majority of her childhood at the tennis club, where she rapidly developed into one of the nation’s top junior players.
Werdel attributes a combination of size advantage, unique playing style and fearlessness to her early triumphs. Regardless of the factors that led to this success, she believes that the experience of winning at a young age was instrumental in preparing her for a prosperous career down the road.
“I think that experience of having won a lot in juniors gives you an inner confidence as you go on to play at higher levels,” explained Werdel. “So many times, kids jump age groups and play up too early. They never really get that feeling of winning. Winning tournaments is a skill. To start each week, be seeded at the top of the draw, and hold the trophy at the end is truly a skill.”
Clearly, this heightened self-confidence paid off as Werdel went on to play collegiately at Stanford in addition to her 11-year professional career. However, she firmly believes that her achievements on the court come second to the valuable life-lessons she learned along the way.
Of the many character traits that Wedel took away from tennis, she believes resiliency is king.
“When you’re in crunch time in a match, you learn to rely on yourself. You become very independent, very resilient,” she said. “If something doesn’t go right in your life, you just have a way of finding it within yourself to dig deep and fix it. You bounce back, and you know that you can lose a match and your life doesn’t end. Things can happen in life that set you back, but you have that skill of resiliency and bouncing back.”
Tennis also teaches athletes how to deal with life’s tough moments. “Sometimes, people can get defeated by a lot of challenges, but athletes look at challenges as an opportunity or puzzle,” said Werdel. “They say, ‘How can I fix this? What can I do differently?’ We’re not afraid of change. If something isn’t working, we know how to try it a different way. You don’t get stuck in ruts.”
Aside from professional tennis, Werdel also gained valuable life-experience during her year of collegiate tennis at Stanford. However, playing in college was something she was initially extremely apprehensive about. In fact, her parents insisted that she attend school, rather than turning professional at a young age.
“Both my parents had gone to Stanford, and education was much more important to them than my tennis. I’m very grateful for that because no matter how great your career is, you’re still finished by the time you’re 30-35 if you’re lucky. You’ve got the rest of your life to go,” Werdel explained.
While Werdel was initially upset to see many of her closest friends playing on the Tour while she was attending college, she soon adopted a new perspective. “I would say about the third or fourth week I was there, I called my parents and said thank you. It was by far one of the best years that I had in my life,” she recalled.
After finishing her first year at Stanford, Werdel rocketed to No. 25 in the world and ultimately made the decision to turn professional with endorsement opportunities she simply could not pass up. Nonetheless, to this day, she is still infinitely thankful for her time at Stanford.
“By going to school, I ended up playing for 11 years. I think I was older, I was more mature, my body wasn’t as fragile, I was able to take the traveling. By having me wait, my parents ended up giving me a gift of a much longer career,” said Werdel.
Werdel was also exposed to a myriad of talented people while attending Stanford, opening her eyes to the world beyond tennis. “In the tennis world, we tend to be coddled and enabled. People treat you like you’re special just because you won tennis tournaments when you were 12 and 13. You get to Stanford and someone down the hall is a concert pianist, someone else has started their own business, somebody else has invented something to save the world, and somebody else is an Olympic track star. You weren’t anything special,” she said.
Understanding that there was more to life than just tennis, Werdel walked away from the sport for nearly 10 years after finishing her professional career. It wasn’t until she moved to San Diego after starting a family that she finally began playing again. Soon after that, she also started mentoring a few young female players.
“The parents started asking how to get through junior tennis,” said Werdel “I had a very difficult relationship with my mother in tennis, and it was hard for me to attend junior tournaments and see those same dynamics, seeing kids and parents struggling to find a good family balance. That was definitely what drew me back into it. If I could help another family, another kid and parent not go through what my parents and I went through, then that was my goal.”
Now a high-performance coach, Werdel works tirelessly to instill the same qualities that she developed as a player into her own athletes. In fact, she recently sat down with some of her fellow former professional players, and they all spoke about the different character traits they had cultivated through the sport.
“We knew how to set goals and work to achieve them. We also learned time management, as well as anger management. You learn how to control your anger. Tennis builds resiliency and confidence. Every tough tennis match is life-skills training x10. We talked about developing independence and a love of travel, an appreciation of the world. We met people from all over the world of all cultures and had very little bias,” Werdel described.
Werdel conducts each and every one of her practices with these characteristics in mind. “The same qualities that it takes to succeed in tennis are the ones that you take with you into life,” she said.
There’s no doubt that tennis is an extremely demanding sport, but every trial and tribulation creates a new break-through and helps young athletes develop into stronger individuals. No matter how great the challenge, you can count on a tennis player to rise to the occasion.