On my usual dog walk route, there are six tennis courts, pressed right up against the fence, and I am fairly sure every child on them could beat me.

Every morning, they are full of kids ranging from six at the youngest to maybe fourteen at the top. I can’t see their faces, but I can hear the sound the ball makes off the strings, and it tells you how many hours are behind it.

The courts aren’t owned by a club as there is no sign or name over the gate. In the late afternoon, people of all ages and levels play on the courts. As far as I can tell, anyone can turn up and hit.

But here is the thing that started following me home. I have never once seen anyone older than fourteen being coached on those courts.

They have to go somewhere, the ones who keep going. Some stop, of course. Puberty, school, a bad shoulder, the typical stuff that thins out any group of kids doing something hard. But the ones with something in them get their foundation on courts like these, and then they get handed up. A new coach, a better surface, then another, then a country that takes the sport more seriously than this one does. A scholarship somewhere. The pipeline carries them off and out of sight, which is why the courts I pass only ever hold the small ones.

That got me thinking about the coaches instead of the kids.

Some former player, whose own career I will never know a thing about, takes a six-year-old and teaches her how to hit a forehand and how to move her feet. Teaches her, over months, how to lose a match and come back the next morning like it did not happen. The whole foundation, the part that decides whether there is anything to build on at all. And then, once she is good, someone else takes over. A bigger name arrives and collects the cream.

The reason is smaller and, if you wish, more unfair than you would hope. The new coach was a bigger player once, and that’s about the whole of it. I kept turning it over on the walk and it kept coming out the same way. How big a name you were when you played is roughly where you begin when you coach. A great career hands you the top of the next ladder. A modest one leaves you at the bottom of it, teaching six-year-olds to move their feet, and it is close to impossible to climb from there to the players who actually matter, however good you happen to be at the work.

The weird part is that this is expected as the big name opens doors, gets phones answered, and reassures parents. It gets the kid into academies and tournaments that are shut to a nobody, no matter how good she is. Some climb anyway, not many, as an exception to the rule. The name is a key, which is exactly why being good at coaching has little to no bearing on getting into the elite league. The contest was always about which past you walked in carrying.

So these coaches on those courts, every day, are doing the hardest and least visible work there is. Teaching kids how to lose and stand back up. And if that kid ever wins anything big, there is a good chance a stranger with a better résumé will be the one beside them, having turned up late and earned the reward by having been, years ago, good at a different thing entirely.

We teach our kids that work earns a reward. Watching those courts every morning, it seems like the work only decides who puts in the years that go uncredited. The rewards are given based on who you already were.