With Wimbledon in the air, Tim Thornborough talks to Kent Kinnear - a professional tennis player on 'the tour'.
In England we tend to associate tennis with the couple of weeks at the end of June when Wimbledon is transformed into the shrine of a sport invented over 100 ago by Major Digby Clopton and originally sold as Spairistike - a polite game to play on the lawn with friends on a summer afternoon. Little did he realise that over 100 years later, his game would grow into a vast industry that tours the world, commands megabuck salaries for its leading players and turns them into sporting icons.
'The Tour' as it is known, is a set of competitions running continuously for 48 weeks of the year. Tennis professionals - many of whom we will never have heard, travel round the globe to qualify and win prize money from them. To keep this vast army of players on the move, together with their coaches, trainers and other hangers on, means that prize money is won by players going out in the first round, and sometimes in the qualifying rounds as well. Over 1,000 tennis players go with the tour, hoping to qualify for the actual competition, but often making only enough money to cover their expenses.
