Zach Svajda
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
“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