Comedian Michael Kosta has crowned the funniest professional tennis player, and his answer might surprise you. The Daily Show host and former University of Illinois tennis player was at the BNP Paribas Open this week to promote his new, aptly-named memoir Lucky Loser, and recalled how tennis and comedy previously intersected for him in Indian Wells when filming Tennis Channel’s “Warm & Fuzzy” for two seasons.
“Andrey Rublev made me laugh the hardest,” he said. “I’m not sure it was on purpose, he was just burning down the whole idea of what we were doing. Madison Keys has chops … Coco [Gauff] has chops, she delivers a nice joke, she does a good job.”
After graduating from college, Kosta attempted to play professional tennis for two years, but only got to a world ranking of No. 864. The journey, and the lessons from his failures that influenced his comedy career, are chronicled in his new book. But in speaking with Prakash Amritraj and Steve Weismann on Tennis Channel, Kosta also confessed that the methodology, and repetition, behind playing tennis and being a successful comedian are similar.
“Comedy’s a lot like tennis. You need reps, he said. “You lose a lot. Every player who’s here has lost so much, comedy you lose so much … but it’s personal. It came from your heart, it came from your soul, it came from your mind. I have bombed so hard that I had to change my socks after a set. You are sweating in places you didn’t know you could sweat.
“Tennis, you lose, it sucks, but sometimes, your opponent just played great. Comedy, when it goes poorly, it really hurts.”
