I would disagree with the premise they did not compete. They competed very hard every day because they had each other to compete against. His premise was he didn't want a watered down version of tennis. He wanted them to compete but against equal competition or better. I've been told that they leave out a part of the story that he would pay professionals to come in and compete against them . If you could compete in a closed environment you would not need to go outside that closed environment to compete. If I had a couple of sons the same age or a group of guys who were compelled to work equally hard I would have never had to go play travel ball. You could go pitcher against hitter and vice versa but that world does not exist in baseball like it does in tennis. He had the perfect world. He may have never yelled but he used other things that were just as bad in real life.