"All tennis players are good actors on the court"
Jan-Lennard Struff confesses that all tennis players play with physical and mental discomfort almost every match and strive to pretend that it is not so.
Maximum demanding, physical and mental toughness, infinite tolerance for frustration, and also good acting skills. That is what every great tennis player must have, as acknowledged by Jan-Lennard Struff in an interesting reflection made in a German media outlet. The veteran German tennis player admits that only about 10% of the matches each player competes in a season are free of issues.
It is very easy to judge from the comfort of our homes or from the stands of a court, but all tennis players deserve the empathy of others to try to understand what lies behind their sporting activity. Tennis is a sport as exciting and fun as it is complex, cruel, ruthless, and difficult to grasp.
Anyone who has never played at a certain level cannot imagine the demons that plague the mind of every tennis player during their matches and how any aspect of their personal life can influence their performance. In that vein, Jan-Lennard Struff expressed in a German podcast.
Very important words from Jan-Lennard Struff, which I think the media, journalists and fans should perhaps consider when assessing players and their performances and writing about them.
— ilyza1002 (@ilyza1002) November 2, 2025
"I think we're all good actors, too. We athletes and tennis players. I don't think that… pic.twitter.com/PeHRfNaVgS
At 35 years old, the German has experienced all kinds of ups and downs in his career, reaching as high as world number 21 and being a Masters 1000 finalist, but also falling out of the top-100 and enduring difficult negative streaks for anyone to comprehend. Many times we see a player perform poorly without any apparent reason and judge their performance summarily, without paying attention to all that may be behind those poor showings.
Struff states that only 5 or 6 matches a year are played by each player without physical or mental issues
An individual sport like this, demanding in every aspect, played for 11 months a year on a traveling circuit, creates a vast distance between the reality experienced by the players and what the fans see. Narratives like Struff's greatly help open the fans' eyes and understand that they are privileged to dedicate themselves to something they love and from which they live unimaginable experiences for others, but they also endure enormous pressure and have to deal with things any ordinary citizen wouldn't.
"All tennis players are good actors because in the vast majority of matches, we all feel far from perfection. If I play about 50 or 60 matches in a season, I would say that only in about 5 or 6 am I free from physical problems and mentally completely fresh, without anything disturbing my concentration and performance. The rest is about dealing with whatever happens, accepting the limitations you may have, and being the best you can with what you have," stated the German.
In any other team sport, physical or mental issues can be disguised much more by being supported by a team that can compensate for a specific athlete's deficiencies, sometimes making their bad patch go unnoticed. But tennis doesn't deceive. It is important to put oneself in the players' shoes before criticizing or harshly judging them; they are the ones most interested in winning, deriving a significant part of their earnings from their sporting performance and having sacrificed many things to be part of the global tennis elite.
This is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, "Todos los tenistas somos buenos actores en la pista"