Boris Kodjoe

May 7, 2020

May 7, 2020 “I grew up in Germany. My mom’s German. My dad’s from Ghana, West Africa and he put a racquet in my hand when I was three. He started teaching me really early, but my parents split up when I was five. It almost became like a source of pain for me because tennis was my father’s sport. I remember being on the court with him, him being quite pushy and strict about the way I was hitting the ball and it caused me a lot of anxiety on the court because I didn’t want to disappoint him. Every time I hit the ball in the net I’d feel myself freeze up because I could feel him get mad at me for making a mistake. I played all the other sports like soccer and basketball too. In Germany, even in the academy system, you are encouraged to play a lot of different sports, and I did. Tennis became an outlet for me. It helped me deal with my anger and the stress from my parents divorce as well as the pressures of being the only black boy in my community next to my younger brother. I was bullied

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