Month: October 2022

October 25, 2022

#MyBTR- April 1983, at age of 18, I walked on a tennis court as a UCLA Bruin 22-0, one win away from breaking Jimmy Connors all-time record for consecutive wins by an incoming freshman. A year later, I had quit the team and dropped out of school to live in my van, drinking and drugging my life away around the clock. What happened? Well, it turned out it was happening all along. I suffered from un-diagnosed and untreated Bipolar Disorder from my earliest ages. The signs were all there. The volatility of the cheating, the tantrums, the choking, the tanking, all sprinkled within stretches of inspired play. A middle of the pack junior growing up, late my senior year I came into my own, making the US Jr Davis Cup Team and earning a scholarship to the defending NCAA Champion UCLA Bruins. It was a feverish year of results, vaulting me near the top of my class in American tennis.  So out of my comfort zone, I cracked under the pressure of elite tennis, succumbing to my self-medicating ways of alcoholism and addiction, anything to tame my raging mind. I would struggle mightily with addiction and mental illness throughout adulthood, (more…)

October 20, 2022

“In April of 2015, I was playing a Future in Brazil and just starting my career on tour. My dad traveled with me for this tournament. He is my biggest supporter. Never counted anything to invest on me and my sister in sports. All of a sudden, he told me he couldn’t afford my trips anymore. The moment in the country was not the best and he was worried. It was a shock for me. I couldn’t see myself without tennis in my life. At the time, college in America was not well known for a lot of people in Brazil, including me. It was seen like the end of your tennis career. I could barely speak English. I did not want to go and couldn’t agree with my dad. But I didn’t have any other option besides stop playing tennis and live a “normal life”. I also didn’t want that. Tennis is my passion and I had dreams and goals to achieve. I had to go in August since I was already 18. He sent me a couple of articles that opened my mind. I also researched but couldn’t find many information but the ones that I found were (more…)

October 13, 2022

“I don’t like to use the word ‘scared’ because a lot of things can happen in a tennis career. Personally, I just try to improve every day and do the best I can. I believe that good things come with hard work and dedication. It’s common for everyone to have their own goals and it’s not always easy to achieve each one of them. At the end of my career I want to be able to look back and know that I did everything I could to achieve my goals and have no regrets. I’m someone who has a lot of passion for this sport. I really enjoy being in the gym, working hard everyday and putting the utmost effort into every aspect of my development. Sometimes I need to be reminded by my team to have a rest day or I would be working nonstop throughout the year. My passion and the work I put in helps me in the tournaments and matches that I play. Thinking back and reminding myself of the work I’ve put in helps me to stay motivated and gets me through difficult moments. My first junior international tournament was in Georgia when I was (more…)

October 2, 2022

#CelebrityBTR– “I started playing tennis at this day camp my parents sent me to. It was actually a religious camp — well maybe not religious but they made you pray at lunch, so, to me, that’s a religious camp. I was not used to praying, but I ultimately ended up enjoying the camp.  While at camp, we played some version of dodgeball on the tennis courts everyday, really chucking these balls at each other. I’m pretty sure we called it chuckball. I told my parents about it and they called the camp to complain. Chuckball was discontinued, so we had to find something else to do on the tennis courts. I guess it made sense to play actual tennis.  I started playing and was fairly coordinated. My dad had played tennis at Hunter College and used to give tennis lessons. I asked him if he would teach me and never looked back. I must’ve been around 12 at the time, so I started kinda late, but got into it very quickly. My favorite tennis moment was the American East conference quarterfinals against Stonybrook where my dubs partner Barrett Wolf and I won in a dramatic tiebreak. Stonybrook was better, and (more…)