Marcos Giron

January 30, 2019

January 30, 2019 “I was twenty one. I have never dealt with this before, it came out of nowhere. For me, I always lived in this happy-go-lucky life, where everything is going to be okay. I was going in for an MRI on my hip when I got a call from my mom saying that it’s over. Now I have an MRI, where all I get to think about, as I lay still in the tube, with no escape, is my parents divorce. I am alone with my thoughts and no one to talk to. At this point I had to take two months off for my hip. This was extremely tough as I couldn’t even use tennis as an escape. I was just home, kind of in the middle, dealing with the forefront, not able to ignore the situation. It’s hard, you care about both people, but when they are not communicative, you find yourself in between. Once they divorced they were immediately separate, I split my time between them. My days consisted of rehab, followed by coming home and looking back on everything we have been through as a family, knowing it will never be the same. From (more…)

Dustin Brown

January 28, 2019

January 28, 2019 “My dad’s Jamaican and my mother is German. I was born in Germany in ’84 and moved around ’96 to Jamaica. I pretty much have both cultures inside of me. I started out with speaking German at the schools in Germany and then speaking English in high school in Jamaica. They are both a part of me but at the same time, growing up, I was a little bit of an outsider in both places. A colored kid growing up in Germany, when racism was prevalent, which I definitely had to deal with it often, whether at school or tennis, was very tough. There were maybe three colored kids in our area and weirdly enough a couple were even half jamaican. Also on the other side, going back to Jamaica, where I was a black kid, I was still known as the German boy. My english was good but they still heard my German accent. I was really happy when that went away after a few years. It’s always been a little difficult for me but I’ve been able to adapt. Whether German or Jamaican, which are completely opposite, I change based on the culture I am (more…)

Bjorn Fratangelo

January 24, 2019

January 24, 2019 “Early in my career when I first started, fear definitely held me back. I was never great, I was good, so the success I had later in juniors kind of came out of nowhere. For me I think I handled it the wrong way. It was something that put me in the limelight, while I wanted to be out of it. Winning the French (Roland Garros) threw me in this weird mix with all these people that I didn’t think I belonged with. Obviously doing it on clay is something no American had done in a really long time and I didn’t feel like I was there yet, or that I was good enough. I almost felt like it was a little bit of a fluke. The first few years after that, I maybe wasn’t in the right mind frame to handle losses. Every time I lost I thought to myself if I was doing it for the right reasons or if I got thrown into this. …You have to truly accept losing. Only one guy wins every week. You can go through a year of good results, but not win a tournament. Its just the tough (more…)

Jamie Loeb

January 23, 2019

January 23, 2019 “It was Indian Wells, two years ago. I lost in the last round of qualies and I just knew something was off. I called my sister and mom, but no one was picking up, it was really strange. Then finally my sister got in touch with me and told me that my mom had a stroke. I didn’t know what to think and all I wanted to know was that she was okay. I didn’t tell anyone unless someone asked. That changed my outlook on everything. Winning and losing a tennis match means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It was tough, I flew home immediately. If you knew her pre stroke, you would know how independent she was and always on the go, just like everyone knew the famous Susan Loeb to be. Then to see her in a wheelchair, it left me speechless. It changed everything for me since I was always wondering if I was being selfish for being on the road and not at home helping. Between tournaments and training I thought I should’ve been with her, but she wanted me to play. She knows how much it means to me. Both (more…)

Chris Eubanks

January 22, 2019

January 22, 2019 “This is something that I struggled with. During my first few months traveling it was just me and I thought everything was great, living out of hotels, everything just seemed easy. It might’ve been my third month after a lot of travel by myself where I just hit a wall in which I felt pretty unhappy. I think mainly it was just a sense of loneliness. Even when guys are going out to player parties or dinners, I’m kinda like, ‘No, I’m good’. I enjoy just chilling at a hotel, watching movies on my computer and just ordering food in, but after about three months of doing that every single day it gets really old. So I kinda hit a wall in which I said to myself, ‘this sucks, I’m not enjoying myself right now’. There was a good bit of time where I went out and played a match where if I won the match, great and if I lost then I got to go home. Home gave me that sense of normal. I did feel out of place at times. Some of the guys in our generation have this certain level of confidence that I (more…)

Mitchell Krueger

January 21, 2019

January 21, 2019 “I feel like it will happen eventually. I know that I can compete at a high level, it is just a matter of doing it. There are some moments when I wonder if I’m doing the right thing because I see other people, in my opinion, not doing the right thing and it somehow works for them. They’re doing dumb things and they still are successful. I don’t ever think that I’m wasting my time, I’ll just wonder why it’s working for them and not me. Then I start thinking like when will it happen for me. At some point you put in enough work and do the right things somethings gotta give, right? To be at the highest level of the sport you don’t have the people that mess around, but to play at a level below that, where you are making plenty of money, there are definitely a few guys that are just idiots. They seem to be able to turn it on and off. For them, there seems to be no thought of how much effort they put into practice, they just go out there and hit the ball during the match. Maybe it’s (more…)

Ernesto Escobedo

January 20, 2019

January 20, 2019 “I’ve had a stutter since childhood. I did everything for it. Speech classes, everything. Every day I am trying to improve. That’s why I dont talk too much. Growing up, especially in the tennis world, people are extremely critical with other players. With people who don’t always speak as clearly as they want, they always get made fun of. I learn to live with it, but try to keep improving. It’s always on my mind. If there is a person I dont feel comfortable with I might not go up to them because of it. I am really not that shy, but this holds me back because I just dont want to be at the center of jokes. That’s why in the tennis world I am quiet and I just have my team and thats it. Everyone has a problem, and I know one day mine will go away.” — Ernesto Escobedo (@netoesco) (more…)

Noah Rubin

January 19, 2019

January 19, 2019 “To let down the people closest to me, my friends and family, is my most daunting fear. From an early age I was pretty aware about how many lives I affected. How many people had to sacrifice time, energy and money. The idea that it may not be worth it, or there might not be a way to repay them, haunts me at times. It’s what will take me to that next level, or break me, but to impact the world you cannot let that happen and I won’t.” —Noah Rubin (@noahrubin33) (more…)