I played against a low-ranked professional tennis player once (about 1,500th in the world if I recall correctly). He could beat me so easily that he didn’t even really need to look at the ball or do anything. I was no more effective against him than I would be at fighting a T. Rex. It was laughable.

Yes, pro athletes practice, but practice is not what makes them a pro. He was (like all pro athletes) simply far more physically genetically gifted in a way that even good amateurs are not. Because he had no illusions about his skills or prospects (he basically played tennis for fun), I asked him how much better Roger Federer (the #1 at the time) was than him. He said that Federer could not likely defeat him as easily as he did me, but he’d be “lucky to even beat him [Federer] in a set one out of a hundred times, and I’d have no chance of winning a match ever.”

People have no fucking idea how much better pro athletes are than even good amateurs. Just none. It’s an absolutely staggering world of difference.

For the pro I am talking about, I only managed to get one ball by him and that’s because he stumbled once on the rough court. That is the only reason I got anything at all past him. If we’d been playing on a good court, it would’ve been zero.