What’s so funny about tennis? Daily Show’s Michael Kosta says it could prepare you for a life in comedy

By Don Riddell, CNN

(CNN) — Have you heard the one about the funny tennis player? You probably haven’t, by the nature of their work, they are notoriously serious people; but one man can vouch for them.

Michael Kosta was once among the top-ranked tennis players in the world and now he’s a successful, Emmy-winning comedian. His journey is as unorthodox as it is fascinating, and he says that it’s tennis that made him funny, although he wasn’t laughing much at the time.

Kosta made it up to number 864 in the ATP singles rankings, which certainly makes him one of the best tennis players in the world.

“Just to give you some insight into how proud I am of that,” he told CNN Sports, “I’m 45 years old now, I’ve been a comedian for 22 years and number 864 is still my email signature to this day.”

But as he explains in his new book “Lucky Loser,” there is nothing glamorous about the life of a tennis pro who is struggling to make it.

He recalled a tournament in Mexico City where he had partnered with a college friend to split the cost of a hotel room: “The draw came out and we were playing each other. I went to bed that night and said good night to my opponent, who then beat me the next day.

“He said, ‘Well, now that I’ve qualified, I get a free hotel room. Do you want to stay with me?’ So not only did I stay with the guy I was about to play, I then stayed with the guy who beat me. For some reason, I don’t feel like Roger (Federer) and Rafa (Nadal) are managing that.”

Despite having won so many junior trophies that his family had to rent a storage unit to keep them, he found himself living on a shoestring budget to try and keep his dream alive. Kosta traveled all over the world to try and make it as a professional.

But in the end, he ran out of money and self-belief, he’d barely made $11,000 on the ATP Tour and he knew it was time to try something else. “It’s very, very tough,” he surmised. “It sucks.”

Kosta might not quite have realized it at the time, but the grind of being a wannabe tennis pro was preparing him for life as a comedian. “You lose a lot when you’re 864 in the world,” he told CNN.

“I would lose on a Monday or Tuesday, that would give me five or six days until the next tournament. Instead of obsessing over my matches or the difficult life I had chosen, I would write down these ideas, jokes and interactions that I thought were funny. It was a good way to decompress from the stress of it all.”

Not only that, he understood that the tennis circuit was an interminable slog through some questionable establishments in backwater towns, the comedy circuit for a beginner would be no different.

“You’re alone, you’re problem solving,” he said of the similarities between the two professions. “Playing tennis, dealing with difficult situations, gets you ready for the real world.

“I’ve done a bit, it’s going great, and then the waitress trips and drops all the glasswear, or you get heckled, or the microphone goes out. I felt comfortable handling those situations because of tennis.”

Is there any other sport where the loser has to give a speech? Tennis players learn to be good communicators. Kosta felt as though he had an advantage over many of the fledgling comedians he encountered at the start, he’d been coached to tuck his shirt in, shake hands with strength, look people in the eye and project confidence.

He noted in Lucky Loser that the people telling jokes for a living were often the complete opposite. “Comedians are dressed very poorly, many are noticeably drunk, half are not speaking clearly or are mumbling, they aren’t making eye contact with the audience,” he wrote in the book.

When he exchanged tennis sets for sets on stage, he brought an athlete’s mentality to his craft.

“I remember these older comics would say, ‘Man, it seems like when you have a bad set, you just keep going, it seems like it doesn’t bother you.’ And I go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to sit around and be sad about it, I just thought it was time to go practice!’

“The whole reason I’ve been able to climb up the comedy ladder is because I experienced loss and disappointment over and over again as a tennis player.”

That’s not to say that he ever enjoyed failing in either profession, but he discovered that a bad night on stage was much worse than a defeat on the court.

“Physically, emotionally,” he explained, “to be a professional tennis player is harder than being a professional comedian. But to bomb a joke, the rejection is personal. When I lose, maybe my opponent played well, maybe I was injured. But to bomb a joke that came from your soul, when a group of people say, ‘Absolutely not,’ that hurts way more than losing 6-0, 6-0.”

So, are tennis players funny? Kosta thinks some are, but they just can’t show it. He recalls the impersonations that Novak Djokovic used to do at the start of his career, which he stopped because it was only fueling his opponents.

“I believe Iga Świątek is actually pretty funny, but when you’re No. 1 in the world, everyone’s trying to bring you down, she’s reluctant to share it,” he said.

“Coco Gauff is remarkably light-hearted and goofy for someone who plays at such a high level, and I appreciate that so much.”

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