A study conducted by Farrelly and Nettle (2007) found that players who got married performed worst in the year after this marriage compared to the year before. This was compared to unmarried players of a similar age and they found no difference in their performance. The study was conducted on 238 players who appeared in the top 100 from 1995-2005. This was base on players 8-18 years ago so is being married such a career damaging event now a days? Let's have a look at a couple tennis players who have been married in recent years:-
James Blake
James Blake
In 2012 james blake married his sweetheart Emily Snider in 2012. In the lead up to the wedding blames ranking did in fact drop from 87 in October 2012 to 127 in December 2012- despite this Blake has buckled this trend is now currently up to 87.
Layton Hewitt
Hewitt married Bec Cartwright in 2005. At that time he was world number 2, a year later he drifted towards the lower end on the top 20 rankings.
These are just two examples and it obviously doesn't mean that all players that get married will definitely fall down the rankings but it a good excuse for the top players to use if their girlfriends keeps going on about marriage!
link to the study - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.staff.ncl.ac.uk%2Fdaniel.nettle%2Ftennis%2520players.pdf&ei=ZQTTUcHyDrSo0wXl_4GoCg&usg=AFQjCNEH-eOEo6KppcPe_Ced1d9k4AN7xQ&sig2=E75yC9opI87fjETc0eZ2Yw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.d2k
link to the study - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.staff.ncl.ac.uk%2Fdaniel.nettle%2Ftennis%2520players.pdf&ei=ZQTTUcHyDrSo0wXl_4GoCg&usg=AFQjCNEH-eOEo6KppcPe_Ced1d9k4AN7xQ&sig2=E75yC9opI87fjETc0eZ2Yw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.d2k
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