Introduction: The Problem To Be Solved
Greetings and welcome to my new project, First Ball To Last, A Tennis Mental Health and Wellness Initiative. Mental Health has been in the news a great deal of late. Teenage rates of anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and self-harm have skyrocketed recently, so much so the Surgeon General of the United States issued a national mental health advisory declaring US teen's declining mental health as the crisis of our time. In our world of tennis, former world #1 Naomi Osaka had to step away from the game after going public with her mental struggles. Former American tennis star Mardy Fish had a Netflix documentary made about his mid-career anxiety and panic attacks, the mercurial Australian star Nick Kyrgios has struggled mightily on and off the court with his mental wellness and to a lesser degree, Australian Ash Barty quit tennis as the #1 player in the world, the 2nd time she walked away from our great sport. Someone who trains their whole lives to become the be