Month: December 2024

December 15, 2024

“My sister was a tennis player as well. I would always go from school to her practices to be a ball kid. I just spent a lot of time there. Then, during the weekends, I would go with my dad to the club. I’d always want to play eight points, doubles, anything.. In order to play, he’d always make me do a basket of serves before and after the activity. When I was 12 years old, I moved to the US after I finished school. As soon as I moved, I saw it as less of a hobby and more of a job. I was competing week in, week out. As soon as I started to get deeper into that competition, it built up little by little until I started playing some bigger junior events. Since I was so young when I moved, I don’t think I realized the level of change – how much I would miss my family, my friends, everything. At that moment, I was just pursuing my dream and trying to have a chance of being a professional tennis player. Growing up, I watched tennis when my country had the best Colombian cycle. I would wake (more…)

December 8, 2024

“I think the hardest part about actually playing pro tennis is realizing that, as a career, it doesn’t change much. As a kid, you dream about this career and you see the stars. Then, after actually having a little bit of experience traveling with pro players or playing at the top level. It’s the same stuff. Obviously, the money changes, but it’s the same waiting around, the same pressures..  I grew up in the golden era of tennis, watching Roger, Rafa and Novak. Coming up, I wanted to be like them. And I realized as a young kid that I had the talent, but when you hit your mid-teens, it’s hard to figure out everything else that it actually takes to make it there.  Tennis is very hooking in a way where you always think you’re going to figure it out. You’re always waiting for that day, and it never comes. But that’s what keeps you going. It was my dream to play professional tennis, and my parents were very supportive of that. But around mid-2019, I sort of called it. At that point it was very difficult financially for me to stay on tour. I would play for a (more…)

December 1, 2024

“Recently, things have been tough with my dad. I found out in July after Wimbledon that he has stage 4 cancer. When I found out about my dad’s diagnosis, I didn’t really know what to do. I questioned taking off the rest of the year just to be with him, but I know he wants me to play. I knew something was up for, honestly, the whole month or two in Europe while I was away during the clay court swing and leading into grass. He wasn’t feeling well and I could tell he was down. I would ask him, “What’s wrong?” He didn’t want to tell me because I was away. He wanted to wait until I came back home from the Europe swing, so that’s when I found out. I went home, and it was definitely really tough. When I came home, I saw him and didn’t even really recognize him. He lost a lot of weight. I was going to play Newport in a few weeks — that’s the first tournament leading up to the US Open swing — and at the time I was just like, “I don’t want to do this. I just want to be with (more…)