Category: Story

February 14, 2019

February 14, 2019 “I had a very difficult route getting to where I am today. My mom migrated here from Guyana, in 1987, searching for a better life. While growing up my mother worked three jobs at one point, just to be able to send me to tournaments. Despite all that, she somehow always found a way to keep me in tennis. I struggled with traveling alone but it was the only choice I had. I literally had to win matches so I could afford to get to the next tournament. It seemed that I was looked past until I won some of the bigger matches. I’ve always been told that I’m too short, or my game isn’t big enough to be top 100. I was at my end point just before winning the 2013, 18’s hard court nationals, in both singles and doubles. From that I earned the main draw US Open wildcards for singles and doubles. Before the final I didn’t even have money to buy breakfast for myself. I tried calling my mom, who was home at the time, to find a solution but my phone was cut off because we couldn’t pay the bill. I was (more…)

February 12, 2019

February 12, 2019 ”My dad passed away in October of 2011. I had been pro for only about three months at this point. I received one of the worst phone calls anyone could ever get. I was at a 10k future in Texas when I entered my housing for the week. It was around 8 or 9 p.m when my mother called me. I think a part of me is still in that room to this day. I remember this conversation with my father, about four or five months prior to his passing. We were outside our house on a summer’s evening, while he was just drinking a beer and looking up at the stars. I go out and sit with him in silence. After a few moments, he just says to the air, ‘Is this all there is?’ I was twenty at the time and had no faculties to answer that question. He was a seasoned man, who worked harder than anyone I’ve ever met, to fund two kids’ tennis careers. I had no idea how to answer that question when a man who had been through the ringer couldn’t. It was something that stuck with me. While playing (more…)

February 8, 2019

February 8, 2019 ”I started playing tennis at the boys and girls club. At nine years old I was homeschooled. My mother knew how much I loved to play the sport. She would do anything for me. Between wanting to spend time with my siblings and I, and wanting to watch me progress as a tennis player, she sacrificed everything just for that goal. This was not easy since it was basically one parent while growing up in the projects. My father wasn’t around much. When I was thirteen, I watched him get sentenced for real estate fraud. Despite always having a connection, since he was my father, we never became that close because he was in jail for most of my childhood. The living situation wasn’t ideal. It got so bad for about two years we lived without running water, heat and air conditioning. The limited money affected my tennis. We didn’t have enough money for me to continue to play or travel. Since I was the best in the south for my age group, and got along really well with everyone in my section, people were extremely generous and would pay for my trips to tournaments, if I (more…)

February 5, 2019

February 5, 2019 “I have suffered from depression since my early teens. I finally shared my story in a Telegraph article at the beginning of 2018, but, by that time, I’d been grappling with whether to go public with my struggle for years. I have an excerpt from a blog post I drafted (but never published) in 2016—the best year of my career to date. ~“I’m sitting in a busy locker room, facing the nearest wall, with a towel draped over my head so no one can see the silent tears rolling down my face. An anti-doping monitor stands nearby shifting awkwardly left and right wondering when will be a good time to ask me to sign consent papers for testing. She’s been standing there for thirty minutes and I haven’t so much as acknowledged her presence—even in my special state of misery, I feel guilty about this. All of the standard questions and doubts roll through my head with relentless persistence. ‘Why couldn’t you handle the nerves better?’ ‘Why didn’t you play your game?’ ‘Would a someday champion wilt under pressure that way?’ And perhaps the most haunting question, ‘At a career high ranking of 71 in the world, (more…)

February 4, 2019

February 4, 2019 “He was diagnosed around October, 2012 and passed away November, 2014. Sean Karl. He was in remission during the summer of 2013 and then came to UT (Tennessee) that fall. Then November of ‘13 he was diagnosed again. It was a one step forward, two steps back situation. We were close friends. Through playing with Sean, we all became brothers. We were a team. He played the fall of his freshman year and then was forced to stop when it returned. He competed in fall tournaments but sadly never competed in a dual match. He underwent all his treatment in Knoxville, once he got to school. He was at every practice that he could, during his schedule of one week of treatment and two weeks off. During the off weeks he would be in good enough shape to hit with us. He was always around us. We met every Thursday with the team which was led by the coach. It was extremely spiritual. It started and ended with a prayer. The whole team would be in the tennis center and listen to Sean get raw about his treatment and how he is feeling. He once broke down (more…)

February 2, 2019

February 2, 2019 “This was about three years ago when I was 350 in the world for singles, playing the futures tour, for doubles as well. The bank account was low and I was unsure how I was going to get home. Once was in China and once was somewhere in Europe. The flight home was around eight hundred dollars, so you can imagine where the account was at. That was traveling the cheapest way possible with about twelve layovers. I luckily had a few kind people who helped me out minimally financially, which was my only option. I constantly tried to travel as few times as possible, which meant I was away from home six to eight months at a time. The question always came up, ‘What am I doing?’ I was going week to week, making two or three hundred dollars. Then after taxes it was basically nothing. What am I doing with my life. I am twenty nine now. I don’t have a degree, which I am working online for. Other people around my age, who I went to school with, have cars, houses, etc…living the less stressful life. They see me and think that I am (more…)

January 30, 2019

January 30, 2019 “I was twenty one. I have never dealt with this before, it came out of nowhere. For me, I always lived in this happy-go-lucky life, where everything is going to be okay. I was going in for an MRI on my hip when I got a call from my mom saying that it’s over. Now I have an MRI, where all I get to think about, as I lay still in the tube, with no escape, is my parents divorce. I am alone with my thoughts and no one to talk to. At this point I had to take two months off for my hip. This was extremely tough as I couldn’t even use tennis as an escape. I was just home, kind of in the middle, dealing with the forefront, not able to ignore the situation. It’s hard, you care about both people, but when they are not communicative, you find yourself in between. Once they divorced they were immediately separate, I split my time between them. My days consisted of rehab, followed by coming home and looking back on everything we have been through as a family, knowing it will never be the same. From (more…)

January 28, 2019

January 28, 2019 “My dad’s Jamaican and my mother is German. I was born in Germany in ’84 and moved around ’96 to Jamaica. I pretty much have both cultures inside of me. I started out with speaking German at the schools in Germany and then speaking English in high school in Jamaica. They are both a part of me but at the same time, growing up, I was a little bit of an outsider in both places. A colored kid growing up in Germany, when racism was prevalent, which I definitely had to deal with it often, whether at school or tennis, was very tough. There were maybe three colored kids in our area and weirdly enough a couple were even half jamaican. Also on the other side, going back to Jamaica, where I was a black kid, I was still known as the German boy. My english was good but they still heard my German accent. I was really happy when that went away after a few years. It’s always been a little difficult for me but I’ve been able to adapt. Whether German or Jamaican, which are completely opposite, I change based on the culture I am (more…)

January 24, 2019

January 24, 2019 “Early in my career when I first started, fear definitely held me back. I was never great, I was good, so the success I had later in juniors kind of came out of nowhere. For me I think I handled it the wrong way. It was something that put me in the limelight, while I wanted to be out of it. Winning the French (Roland Garros) threw me in this weird mix with all these people that I didn’t think I belonged with. Obviously doing it on clay is something no American had done in a really long time and I didn’t feel like I was there yet, or that I was good enough. I almost felt like it was a little bit of a fluke. The first few years after that, I maybe wasn’t in the right mind frame to handle losses. Every time I lost I thought to myself if I was doing it for the right reasons or if I got thrown into this. …You have to truly accept losing. Only one guy wins every week. You can go through a year of good results, but not win a tournament. Its just the tough (more…)

January 23, 2019

January 23, 2019 “It was Indian Wells, two years ago. I lost in the last round of qualies and I just knew something was off. I called my sister and mom, but no one was picking up, it was really strange. Then finally my sister got in touch with me and told me that my mom had a stroke. I didn’t know what to think and all I wanted to know was that she was okay. I didn’t tell anyone unless someone asked. That changed my outlook on everything. Winning and losing a tennis match means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It was tough, I flew home immediately. If you knew her pre stroke, you would know how independent she was and always on the go, just like everyone knew the famous Susan Loeb to be. Then to see her in a wheelchair, it left me speechless. It changed everything for me since I was always wondering if I was being selfish for being on the road and not at home helping. Between tournaments and training I thought I should’ve been with her, but she wanted me to play. She knows how much it means to me. Both (more…)