Firstballtolast

Emotional intelligence has been in the news a lot lately, but most of the headlines don’t use that phrase. They talk about anxiety, depression, burnout, breakdowns, “stepping away,” “needing a reset.” Teenage rates of distress and self-harm have skyrocketed so sharply that the U.S. Surgeon General issued a national advisory calling youth emotional well-being the crisis of our time. Kids haven’t changed that much. The world around them has. We’ve handed them a life moving at 5G speed without the emotional pads and helmet to go with it. You don’t have to look far to see how this plays out in sport. In tennis alone, former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka stepped away from the game after going public with her struggles. Mardy Fish had an entire Netflix documentary made about the panic and anxiety that nearly ended his career. Nick Kyrgios has wrestled loudly and painfully with his emotional life on and off the court. Ash Barty walked away from tennis as the best player in the world—for the second...