The Sports Memoir We Didn’t Know We Needed

The Racket is seemingly experiencing a second-wave of popularity, likely due to the current tennis craze post-Roland-Garros and Wimbledon and aided by the release of a softcover edition on May 29, 2025. I finally decided it was time to scoop up a copy for myself, stuffing it in my backpack with the hopes this would be a book I’d actually read on vacation. 

Once I started, I ripped through it. 

The Racket – a memoir that reveals the arduous and emotional path to becoming a professional athlete – made its official debut in June of 2024 and quickly became a hit among sports enthusiasts, earning the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in 2024 – a highly-prestigious award that recognizes excellence in sports writing. 

“As I was learning consistent and conservative tennis in my early teens, the best junior players across Europe were developing weapons … I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but I fell behind the world’s future top 50 between the ages of twelve and sixteen,” writes Conor Niland in Chapter One of “The Racket: On Tour with Tennis’s Golden Generation – and the other 99%.

His memoir offers a raw, unvarnished look at life on the Futures and Challenger circuits, where players outside the Top 100 grind it out in obscurity. Players criss-cross the world traveling – often alone – racking up credit card bills, staying in crummy hotels, and hopping back on a plane at a moment’s notice after losing a match to fly to the next tournament and repeat the process again – hopefully to win the next match. 

It’s a lonely game. 

Once Ireland’s top tennis player, Niland competed professionally from 2005 to 2012 – a period when legends like Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Venus Williams were cementing their legacies. At his peak, Niland reached a career-high ranking of 129 in the world — not quite elite, but still impressive to the casual tennis fan. 

Despite being roughly the same age as Federer — and beating him in a junior match in 1994 — Niland didn’t go on to become one of the greatest tennis players. While Federer became tennis royalty, Niland slogged his way through Challenger and Future tournaments, clinging to the hope of a breakthrough.

In 2011, Niland fought through the qualifiers to earn a spot in Wimbledon’s main draw, becoming the second Irishman to ever represent Ireland in that event. Niland nearly beat his opponent to win the match, but fell apart in the last set due to mental stress. If he had won that match, he would’ve faced Federer again — who by then was a highly-decorated player and ranked number three in the world. 

One year and several matches later, Niland officially retired due to a hip injury in 2012, but admits in The Racket that he still thinks about that Wimbledon match every day, constantly wondering “what if?”

This mindset is a familiar reality for the vast majority of professional tennis players that don’t break into the Top 100: a career marked not by lucrative brand deals, Grand Slam titles, or a steady income stream, but by mental fortitude and sacrifice. For these athletes, retirement is the beginning of an entirely new chapter – usually marked by a significant increase in their quality of life. Only now are they able to put down roots, invest in relationships, and earn a steady stream of income with a consistent job. 

Ironically, in the opening chapter of the book, Niland recalls that when his motivation was faltering as a young child, his father often said something along the lines of “If you work at the right time, you never have to work again.” He then admits he never understood if his father meant hard work now equates to success and early retirement, or hard work now means you don’t have to work as hard later on. 

Niland did work hard – pushing himself throughout his professional tennis career – and still had to figure out how to start over, creating another identity and life for himself outside the courts. He now works full-time in commercial real estate at Cushman & Wakefield but stays connected to tennis as Captain for Ireland's Davis Cup.

The Racket is not just about tennis. It’s also about the mental, emotional, and financial cost of chasing a dream and the crushing realization that – despite years of commitment – you might never “make it” exactly the way you hoped. 

While his true dreams on the court were never realized, he surpassed them off the court. Niland earned accolades like the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, became the Captain for Ireland’s Davis Cup, and created important dialogue about the sacrifice and infrastructure required to create a world-class tennis player and the financial constraints that often prevent that from happening. 

Overall, I found The Racket to be inspirational and hard to put down. The way Niland describes the players he encountered at different points in his life – and follows up with the results of their career – plagued me with my own “what ifs.” 

This type of introspection can be refreshing if reflected upon intentionally. When I finished the last page of The Racket, I didn’t feel left with a sense of nostalgia, loss, or panic for the “what ifs.” Instead, I thought about what I am avoiding because of fear of failure or of not being “great.”  

The Racket is a true testament to how people can reinvent themselves and live a fulfilling life after the game is over, when things don’t turn out the way they want them to. Niland has already lived two lives — and he’s only in his forties. 

What will he do next?