The Court Knows Who You Are (Even When You Don't)

I have never walked onto a court believing I couldn't win.

That's not confidence in the motivational-poster sense. It's more like a quiet, stubborn refusal to do the math before the match starts. Whoever was across the net, whatever the ranking difference, whatever the conditions — there was always some part of me that thought: there's a chance. I don't know exactly where that came from. But it was always there.

I lost a lot of matches. Some I should have won and didn't, and I made peace with that quickly — if I should have, I would have, and I didn't, so there it is. The losses that sting do so temporarily. What I carry are the matches that showed me something about myself I wasn't sure was true.

A few of them I'll never forget.

Egypt, 2006

I was eleven years old and had just beaten the number one and number two players in Benin. The prize was a trip to Egypt for the African Junior Championships. I had no idea what I was walking into.

I watched the U18 players compete and I was completely taken. The physics of it. The geometry. The way the ball could be hit in ways I had never seen. The grit, the emotions, the crowd — all of it landing on an eleven-year-old brain at once. I remember thinking, not in these words but in the feeling of them: this is what this sport actually is. What I had been doing up until then was a rough draft.

I think about Pokémon. I was obsessed at seven — the collecting, the battles, the whole world of it. Tennis hit me the same way, except it never stopped. The grip loosened on most things from childhood. Not this one.

That trip didn't make me a better player immediately. But it expanded the ceiling of what I understood was possible, and that matters more than technique, more than fitness, more than anything a coach can hand you in a practice session. Before you can become something, you have to be able to see it.

Morocco 2008

I was down a set, 5-3, 30-15 against the 8th seed from South Africa in the first round of the U16 African Junior Championships.

People had come and gone from my match. That happens — spectators follow the competitive ones, drift when they think they know how it ends. But my coach had been there from the first point and hadn't moved.

I don't know exactly what switched. I can't point to a technical adjustment or a tactical shift that changed the trajectory. What I remember is a decision. Somewhere in that second set, behind and under pressure, I decided I wasn't going to lose. Not with desperation — more like clarity. A settling.

I played harder. I fed off the friends who had come to watch. And I won.

The feeling I left with from that match is something I still have — not as a memory I have to dig for, but something closer to the surface than that. It made me stronger in a way that wasn't theoretical anymore. I had been in that exact position — behind, the match slipping, the story basically written — and the story had been wrong.

My coach never left. I don't think I fully understood at the time what that meant. I do now.

Senior Day 2015

I'll be honest about this one.

My senior day in college was not my finest tennis. The shots were sloppy, the emotions were high, and I did not behave in what you would call a saintly manner. College tennis gets spicy, and I was fully participating in the spice.

What I appreciate, looking back, is that I didn't fold. For all the mess of it — the emotions, the uneven play, the energy that was probably a little too enthusiastic for the occasion — I competed. I stayed in it. I didn't let confusion or sentiment or the weight of the moment collapse into something I couldn't come back from.

I also owe my opponent an apology. I haven't forgotten that. The competitiveness I'm proud of and the behavior I'm not are not always neatly separable, and that day is where that showed up most clearly. I was human in a way that wasn't entirely flattering. I think that's worth saying out loud.

What Other People See

Here's the thing about those memories: I don't always trust my own version of them.

Some of my best and toughest matches are ones I barely remember now. The score, the opponent, the details — gone. But close friends who were there will bring them up, sometimes casually, sometimes years later. Do you remember when you did this? Do you remember what you were like in that match?

It always catches me off guard. The way they describe me on the court — the competitiveness, the character, the things they saw — is sometimes different from who I think I am. Sometimes more than I give myself credit for.

There's something quietly important in that. Who we truly are isn't always who we think we are. The version of yourself that shows up under pressure, when the match is close and the margin is thin — that person is real. That is you. Maybe more you than the version you walk around as on ordinary days when nothing is on the line and there's no reason to reach.

It gives me relief to know that even in brief moments, even in matches I can barely recall, the people watching saw someone strong. Because I don't always feel strong. Most people don't. But feeling it and being it are not the same thing, and the court has a way of separating those two very cleanly.

What I Want to Give

I'm on the other side of the net now. I coach, I watch, and I try to give players what those moments gave me — which, as it turns out, is not something you can hand someone directly. You can create the conditions. You can stay when others leave. You can make sure the moments happen. But the knowing has to come from inside the experience itself.

What I can do is remind them: who you are on the court is real. The fight you had in that set, the decision you made at 5-3 down, the way you stayed in it when you could have let it go — that happened. And the people watching remember, even when you don't.

On the days when you can't find it in yourself — find someone who was there.

They'll tell you who you were. And sometimes that's exactly enough.