There's Nothing Better Than Watching A Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Get Smoked After Paying His Way Into A Pro Tennis Tournament
Let me make something clear right off the bat--I'm not one of those people who hate billionaires and think they shouldn't exist. Those people drive me crazy. You don't hate billionaires, you just hate that your life sucks.
While I do not inherently hate billionaires, I also don't find myself rooting for them. Like I don't hope billionaires wake up every morning and have the best day of their life. I am insanely jealous of billionaires, so seeing them get knocked down a peg or two brings me great pleasure.
I don't know much about Bill Ackman. But most billionaires at least have to have a pinch of sociopath in their natural behavior. You don't earn that much money by just being a normal dude. Usually you need to have a wildly inflated ego with an immense amount of confidence, whether that confidence is earned or not. Guys like that think they would be great at anything and everything. For the most part, that's true. But money can't buy you athleticism. Money can buy you a court to put in your home. It can buy you into all the fancy tennis clubs you want. It can buy you the best lessons from the best coaches available. But at the end of the day, you're either born an athlete or you are not.
I'm sure Bill Ackman wins plenty of tennis matches when he's playing against all of his friends who want to remain on his good side. But somehow he managed to get himself into a tournament on the ATP Challenger Tour, and he quickly found out that these people are not his friends. If you're going to play with Jack Sock as your playing partner, these guys are going to relentlessly hit the ball in your direction. They're not going to play nice just because you have multiple commas in your bank account. You can pay your way into a tournament all you want, but all you paid for was a lesson to learn that you actually suck at tennis.
If I know billionaires like I think I do, they don't handle failure well. I would assume that the idea of being a really good tennis player has a huge role in Bill Ackman's personality. He probably talks about how great he is all the time, and about how he could have gone pro if it weren't for managing that pesky little Pershing Square Capital Management. And now that he has to face the reality that he's actually ass at the sport that he loves? Sure, he has enough money that he can just pick up any other hobby in the world to help ease the pain. But this is one that is going to keep him up at night for quite some time. And for a poor broke bastard like myself, that's enough to put a smile on my face.