Firstballtolast

  Role Models In Society The year was 1993. The moment, a thirty-second Nike commercial directed by Spike Lee, featuring NBA superstar Charles Barkley. Barkley was the reigning league MVP, dominating not just on the court but also the evening news, thanks to a string of embarrassing off-court incidents. A little humility and a promise to do better might have quieted his critics. But not the Chuckster. Instead, he double-dribbled down. (possible drawing of Barkley in his 76’ers prime) On camera, Barkley declared, “I’m not a role model. I’m not paid to be a role model. I’m paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” Red herring aside, no sane person was asking Charles Barkley to raise their children, the commercial ignited a cultural firestorm, sparking a debate that still lingers to this day. What responsibilities do star athletes bear in society, what is reasonable to expect of ...

  There was a movie out some years ago called A Beautiful Mind. If they ever made one about the everyday competitive tennis player, it might be titled A Not-So-Beautiful Mind. Because let’s be honest: the strokes aren’t always what take us down. It’s the head. The spin cycle between the lines. The anxious, edgy, manic thinking that shows up right on schedule—when the match gets tight, when the body gets tired, when the score starts talking. The esteemed Dr. Allen Fox once said to me, “You won in spite of yourself.” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just talking to me. Tennis is a strange sport that demands composure while practically manufacturing stress. We run around at full speed for extended periods, under uncertainty, under judgment, under consequence—so of course the emotions intensify. Of course the thinking speeds up. And the brutal part is how invisible it can be from the outside. The iceberg effect: everyone is feeling it; some people are simply better at not showing it. Some ...

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...