This is something that I struggled with.
During my first few months traveling it was just me and I thought everything was great, living out of hotels, everything just seemed easy. It might’ve been my third month after a lot of travel by myself where I just hit a wall in which I felt pretty unhappy.
Mainly it was just a sense of loneliness. Even when guys are going out to player parties or dinners, I’m kinda like, ‘No, I’m good’.
I enjoy just chilling at a hotel, watching movies on my computer and just ordering food in, but after about three months of doing that every single day it gets really old.
So I kinda hit a wall in which I said to myself, ‘this sucks, I’m not enjoying myself right now’.
There was a good bit of time where I went out and played a match where if I won the match, great and if I lost then I got to go home.
Home gave me that sense of normal. I did feel out of place at times. Some of the guys in our generation have this certain level of confidence that I wish I had. At the same time, I am also fearful of trying to be that, which is not truly me, and not backing it up.
If I want to be where I say I want to be, I am going to have to learn to get a bit of that. I don’t know how, and I don’t know where it comes from. Finding a bit of balance between getting that authentically and not letting it be just a facade and a front, while not changing who I am.
At the end of the day, our tennis careers are only going to last a certain time, you will have a life after it and people will remember the type of person you were while on tour. I am always very mindful of that.
— Chris Eubanks (Georgia Tech 2017)
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