Behind The Racquet: Marcos Giron

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I was twenty-one. I have never dealt with this before, it came out of nowhere.

For me, I always lived in this happy-go-lucky life, where everything is going to be okay. I was going in for an MRI on my hip when I got a call from my mom saying that it’s over.

Now I have an MRI, where all I get to think about, as I lay still in the tube, with no escape, is my parent’s divorce. I am alone with my thoughts and no one to talk to.

At this point, I had to take two months off for my hip. This was extremely tough as I couldn’t even use tennis as an escape. I was just home, kind of in the middle, dealing with the forefront, not able to ignore the situation.

It’s hard, you care about both people, but when they are not communicative, you find yourself in between. Once they divorced they were immediately separate, I split my time between them. My days consisted of rehab, followed by coming home and looking back on everything we have been through as a family, knowing it will never be the same. From this, I started questioning my reality with tennis.

Looking back, I would tell myself that it would all be okay. With my parents divorced, my girlfriend’s parents divorced and many other people I knew, was there any real point in relationships?

And is there any real point in my tennis career, I am going to get hurt eventually. What is the significance without all the relationships with people? It was truly my sister and girlfriend who were crucial in getting me through.

Hip surgery was Christmas day in 2015, with a second surgery a couple of months later in February on my other hip. After the first surgery, I was extremely optimistic about how it went and how rehab was going. After just a couple months I was back in pain, but now in my other hip.

The idea of nine-to-ten months off, when we don’t know how long our careers will be, is scary. I definitely had thoughts of quitting. Guys my age were playing slams, and I was as far as you can be from that. It wasn’t like I have proven it to myself that I can make it, and I still haven’t. I just thought back to all that I put towards this dream I had and the guilt of giving it up would be more than I can handle.

— Marcos Giron (UCLA 2014)

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