Category: Story

March 9, 2019

March 9, 2019 “I didn’t know the path I was going to take. My parents sacrificed everything, financially, for me to play and there just wasn’t enough left. I thought this would force me to play college tennis when all I wanted to do was go pro. There were even thoughts of not playing tennis anymore and just studying. During the last tournament, that my parents could afford, I decided to play a future instead of a junior event. I qualified for two futures and made quarterfinals of one, and semi finals of the other. From this success, and wowing the people back home, I got enough support to play five more weeks of futures around Africa. During this trip I won two futures, which proved to myself and others that I could compete and beat players 300 in the world and better. From this success came a management contract, which supported my travel and a great team around me. Regardless of how well it went at first, I was still grinding futures with the occasional challenger, for two to three years. I was unable to fully able to break through. It all took a turn when my father passed (more…)

March 7, 2019

March 7, 2019 “If I knew that I only had a year left to play it would all be different. I would enjoy tennis much more than I ever have. It would completely change how I think on court. How I feel, as other players may understand, is that there are many times where I do not enjoy the sport. I truly love the sport but it comes with too much pressure. I am always thinking about winning and losing, money, points, everything. I put this pressure on myself to be top 50, or top 100, and I don’t enjoy the moment when I am out there competing on court, which is upsetting. I love that this sport is my life, but when I am not enjoying it I ask myself why I am playing. If I only had one match left, I would enjoy every single minute of playing. I have tried to fake it but it only lasts two or three weeks until the pressure builds again. We really should be living like this because you don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I see myself playing for another 5+ years at least, but not with the same suffering (more…)

March 2, 2019

March 2, 2019 “Around the age of 12 was when I realized that I was gay. I lived many years dealing with denial, confusion, and pretending to be somebody that I wasn’t. Tennis, unfortunately, is such a judgmental sport that causes people to believe that they need to portray a certain image or meet a certain standard. Hiding who I truly was for so long, led me to develop depression and anxiety which affected my play because I was worrying about what people thought about me rather than focusing on my game. I was always so afraid to be my true self because being gay wasn’t really accepted as is, and even more so in the tennis world. It took me until I was 19/20 years old to understand and realize that there was a life outside of tennis. Once I overcame the fear of being judged and feeling like an outsider, I finally was able to accept myself ,and by doing so, I found happiness within myself, a newfound enjoyment for the game of tennis, and was able to find the love of my life.” — Kat Stewart (@kat_stewie) (more…)

February 28, 2019

February 28, 2019 “As I look back, anxiety has always been something I have struggled with. In 2014, I hit my career high and things were seemingly going pretty well, until I got injured. I missed about six weeks for my back at this time and I slowly started to feel myself getting antsy. As I look back there were more than a few stresses that built up to this crescendo. Despite the wave of emotion from breaking through the top 100, I thought there were more eyes on me now, which led to the thought of, what now? Dealing with ongoing back issues, I don’t think I was completely honest with myself with what I wanted. It is now two weeks before my first French Open main draw. It felt as if I had no control of my mind. I had a panic attack on my flight from Dallas to Paris. It was nine hours of some of the most agony and pain I have ever felt. I thought that every breath I took could be my last. After getting to Paris, I could barely practice. I would walk off the court immediately and hop into a car to (more…)

February 26, 2019

February 26, 2019 “When growing up, in order to play tennis at a high level, you need to have some money in your family. My mom had cancer three times. First diagnosed when I was around ten. It had a large strain on my family. When reflecting on it, I wonder if I didn’t play tennis, would my parents be happier, since financials wouldn’t be an issue? Growing up on the north shore, people assume you have a lot of money. Regardless of what my parents did for a living, between three battles with cancer, doctor bills really built up. It took a major toll, forcing my family to take out multiple mortgages on the house. It is still really tough since they still cannot help me financially, nor would I ask them too. It has been extremely tough for my brother and I. They sacrificed everything for us to play tennis. They sacrificed their relationship for us. I remember going back home freshman year of college and there was constant fighting about finances. After some time I just left my house for six hours, sat in my car in a parking lot and just sobbed, not knowing why this (more…)

February 24, 2019

February 24, 2019 “About 5 years ago my father slowly started to develop Alzheimers. He was a running back for the Miami Dolphins. He was hit in the head so many times and concussions never kept players out of games. It progressed pretty rapidly. We ended up putting him in an assisted living home. It’s been one of the hardest things I had to endure in my life, which includes having cancer, knee surgeries and my mother having a stroke. This is beyond all of that. Tennis used to be my escape but recently it has just been taking away time that could be spent with my dad. The time with my dad is limited, every day matters, since it’s only getting worse. My biggest fear is that I will come back from a tournament and look at him and all there will be is confusion. I kind of find peace in the fact that he wants me to be doing this and not give my dream up for him, but at what point is it okay to say missing time with my father is worth that? Every day I step on the court and think about why I am (more…)

February 23, 2019

February 23, 2019 “I am not a pro athlete. I am a school administrator who works long hours and somewhat maintains an orderly household. I am also a mom who had to ‘earn’ the title of tennis player. Throughout my life I was fairly successful in anything sport related. One day I got on my daughter’s case for a less than great effort, during a tennis match. My kid told me that I didn’t understand, and I was immediately offended. I mean, I was the parent, I was an ‘athlete’, don’t tell me that I don’t understand. I felt that it was my job to guide her, and she was supposed to listen. However, the look in my daughter’s eyes spoke loudly. I mean she truly didn’t believe I understood her. Destined to never have the ‘mom you don’t understand’ conversation again, I needed to prove her wrong. I got a USTA number, entered an adult tournament and learned how to serve through youtube videos. The tournament was a magnificent failure and so began my education. Bottom line, I really didn’t know. Solely observing tennis didn’t make me an expert. What did happen, at the age of 40, was that (more…)

February 20, 2019

February 20, 2019 “I was always a bit of an underdog. People saw me as a dangerous opponent who could beat top guys on a good day, but who never really went that deep into tournaments. Nobody truly expected me to be a contender for junior slams, so everyone was pretty surprised that I made four finals, winning two of them in just a year. That obviously changed people’s perspectives. It was definitely a lot of pressure, having everyone expecting me to be top 100 right out of juniors. When you have high expectations, you start paying too much attention to the results rather than the process. You start to lose confidence and doubt your abilities, thinking whether or not you’ll actually make it. Especially when the health issues set in, it’s easy to get negative. It took a little while to get the bigger results going, but I made steady progress. I had some bad luck in the summer of 2016. I took a trip to Asia, which was around six or seven weeks long. It was right after I lost the last match of the trip. I was supposed to fly out the next day, when I got (more…)

February 18, 2019

February 18, 2019 “When I was fifteen, I had an eating disorder. There were people in my life and others who would see me on tv, that would tell me I was fat, or needed to lose a few pounds. Eventually, that truly got into my head. I was living off three, 100 calorie bars a day. I struggled with this problem for almost two years, which led to some issues with depression. I completely shut my friends and mom out of my life. I felt like I put this mask on to get through each day, hoping no one would ask how or what I was doing. I became super paranoid because I wanted to keep it all a secret and didn’t want anyone to worry. It took until one day when I realized what I was doing, I was hurting my tennis. I couldn’t get through a week of practice because I had nothing in my body. I let other people change how I felt about myself and that hurt the dream I’ve been working towards since I was four years old. I decided that I needed to get control of my eating. It took some time to (more…)

February 17, 2019

February 17, 2019 “It has always been my dream to play professional tennis. I’ve never been good enough in juniors to even have a realistic shot at it. That’s why going to college was my only and last chance to keep my dreams alive. I had no junior ranking or any true results, so Tulane University and a small, D2 school were the only programs that offered me scholarship. I decided to play for Tulane, but it couldn’t have started at worse. After my first semester, I went back home to Germany. Right away, I started feeling sick to the point where I couldn’t eat or drink anymore. In order to figure out what happened, I was hospitalized for almost three weeks. It turned out I had mono. I spent Christmas and New Years in the hospital and doctors told me I wasn’t allowed to play tennis for at least 2-3 months depending on my recovery. With my scholarship on the line, and also my only hope to ever pursue a professional tennis career after college, I was unsure what would happen. I already missed the pre-season training trip and the head coach was concerned if I’d be able to (more…)