Month: April 2025

April 17, 2025

“My first memory of playing tennis was playing a doubles tournament for kids and their moms. I have an older brother, so he played doubles with my mom and I played with my mom’s friend. I lost, but I still remember the moment. My brother wanted to go pro and my dad was a tennis player in Japan, so I said, “Okay, I want to do it too.” I think I was around 10 years old when I made that decision. There were definitely moments where I wanted to do other things. My dad was a very tough man. If we wanted to do something different, like playing soccer, baseball, those kinds of things, my dad would say, “No, you can’t do this. If you want to be a player, just play tennis.” So I did. Sometimes it was tough, but there were lots of moments that were enjoyable as well. Im remember playing the Junior French Open and after I lost, I called my mom and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” But it’s ups and downs. At the end of the day, even after losses, you still love tennis and that’s the reason I can stand here. Even (more…)

April 10, 2025

“I was lucky. My first main coach, Scott, always believed in me. He always thought I had the potential. Did I believe that? I don’t know. Probably not, but I was the guy that always took it one step at a time. I was good in juniors, but I wasn’t insane. I wasn’t winning two slams. I knew I was going to college for a couple of years and then I was going to play afterwards. It’s interesting seeing this core group of Americans that are a little younger than me. I don’t take it personally, not always being in the conversation. Those guys, Fritz, Tommy, they’re top 10 in the world now, Foe is making semis. Just Sinner, Alcaraz, all these guys, the level they’re producing is crazy. Again, I don’t view that as a negative. If I were to be making deep runs in tournaments consistently, making the semis of slam, yeah, there would be more. But I haven’t done that, so I can’t really expect that. One thing about me, is it did take me a while to break through. I don’t really think that helps you in terms of the spotlight. If you’re 25 when you (more…)

April 2, 2025

“I’ve definitely struggled at times with my identity. I was born in New York, but I never really lived there. I spent my life in Japan until I was 13, then we all moved to Spain. I’ll always have that ‘Daniel’ on my last name, which if I’m in Japan, people are like, “Oh, where’s that from?” And when I lived in Spain, I did struggle quite a bit in the first few years with micro-racism. I ended up being very fond of Spain, but it was tough the first couple of years. My dad really wanted to move because he was in a very typical Japanese corporate life, and it was killing him. He was the one really passionate about tennis, so we followed his idea. It was a busy childhood. I’d play tennis all day and then study the rest of the time. I barely had days off and didn’t really get to play much with my friends. It’s crazy when I think about it now and those are things that I do regret a bit, but they weren’t really in my control. My sister was the talented one in the beginning. I was good enough to tag (more…)