The $24.99 Wilson junior racket that Eric and Melanie Rubin bought before their second child was born, in 1996, was a tiny down payment on the hundreds of thousands they would spend to produce a pro tennis player.
Eric lost three jobs as a commercial lender as he skipped work to train his son, Noah Rubin, at sunrise. He borrowed money to pay for $130-an-hour lessons. Melanie worked for nothing at a tennis club to get free court time for her child.
The costs skyrocketed over the years as Noah, the 2014 junior Wimbledon champion and 2015 NCAA singles finalist, traveled the world for tournaments and wore through $100 outfits and a constant supply of hard-court and clay-court sneakers.
“He went through hundreds of rackets. We’d buy five to six rackets at a time at $250 per racket,” Eric says. “There were times I was unemployed, so it was a problem. I borrowed from my parents a ton.”
The total cost for attending tournaments reached about $40,000 a year
Noah entered competitions from Costa Rica to France, always accompanied by a parent or a coach, and racked up hefty plane, hotel, and restaurant bills. Entry fees that had started at $50 per tournament soon rose into the hundreds.
Each parent had a routine. When Melanie went, she and Noah would eat hibachi dinners and watch movies in the hotel. When Eric traveled, which was most of the time, he and Noah would search for souvenir shot glasses.
The total cost for attending tournaments reached about $40,000 a year.
“That’s after-tax money,” says Eric, who now works as the Long Island representative for Connecticut-based Webster Bank. “That means the first $80,000 of my income goes to that.”
And when Eric and Melanie divorced in 2010, much of the roughly $225,000 in combined legal costs went to lawyers writing mind-numbingly detailed rules determining which parent would direct Noah’s burgeoning tennis career: