Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

Marcus Daniell Interview: Doubles Advice, Career Reflections, and Effective Giving with High Impact Athletes

• Will Boucek • Episode 282

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Marcus Daniell is an Olympic Bronze Medalist and former top 35 ATP doubles player who reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon and the Australian Open. He also founded High Impact Athletes, a company that connects professional athletes with high-impact charities.

Gaby Dabrowski recently launched a fundraising campaign with HIA called Gaby's Games for Good to help protect women and girls from violence.

👉 DONATE TO GABY'S CAMPAIGN HERE

This episode digs into charities, giving, and, of course, doubles!

  • How Gaby’s Games for Good works and how the 1 in 3 Fund makes a huge difference in protecting women and girls
  • Why Marcus shifted from singles to doubles and what he would change about that timeline
  • The “Chapel of Bull$&*t” lesson from coach David Sammel
  • How to train full mental presence in short bursts
  • What Marcus’s doubles style looks like and how to beat him
  • The Tokyo Olympic bronze story with Michael Venus and what he did when he felt burnt out 
  • A practical three-step approach to handling nerves in tiebreakers and closing moments
  • Net positioning tips for the server’s partner and the returner’s partner 
  • What could make pro doubles more popular, including stable teams and better storytelling 
  • Why High Impact Athletes exists and how effective giving can multiply the impact of each dollar

I learned a ton in this one, especially as Marcus described his Olympic story. I also hope you'll join me in donating below.

HIA Links:

Learn more about Marcus & follow:

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A Different Kind Of Tennis Chat

SPEAKER_01

This conversation is a little bit different. You're going to hear a chat about doubles sandwiched in between two smaller conversations around giving and charity. My guest, Marcus Daniel, is from New Zealand. He's a former top 35 doubles player in the world. He's made the quarterfinals of a couple of grand slams. And possibly more impressively, he started high impact athletes about five years ago and has grown it into a charity organization with over 200 athletes around the world. He reached out to me to talk about Gabby Dobrowski's recent charity campaign called Gabby's Games for Good, which we start this conversation discussing. Ted Tribe decided to donate$2 for every game that Gabby wins throughout the 2026 season. And I'm going to link in the show notes where you can learn more about that and also donate to Gabby's charity of choice as well. So check that out and donate if you can. After that, we discussed Marcus's story. He grew up in New Zealand. He had the kind of classic viewer debate that a lot of tennis players or doubles players have with themselves on when to give up singles and when to focus on doubles. And he shares his story from the Auckland tournament in 2010, where he got a wild card and won the tournament. He suffered through some injuries and eventually decided to focus on doubles, which ended up being a very successful choice. I also asked him a lot of strategy questions. So I asked him just to describe his game style and then how he would coach someone to beat his game style. He really opens up about his Olympic bronze medal experience in Tokyo, where he won with Michael Venus. He talked about a lot of the struggles he had leading up to those Olympics and how he dealt with that and what he did and did not share with his doubles partner Michael Venus during that. And then of course his reaction after they won the bronze medal. So that was a really heartfelt, great story that was really kind of him to share. After that, we talked about what advice he would give himself back when he started if he had any regrets during his career. And then we dove into strategy, how to deal with pressure, strategy advice for the server's partner, for the returner's partner, and then of course how to make doubles more popular. And at the end, he shares the story of how he started high-impact athletes. It's a really impressive story, and it's really an amazing accomplishment where he's been able to take it. You're going to learn why all charities are not created equal and why you need to be really diligent about where you spend your money and how it can be much more effective to give to certain charities over another. So this is a wide-ranging conversation. You'll get lots of doubles, also some uh really great opportunities to give back and to understand um what it means to give effectively. So without further delay, enjoy this conversation with Marcus Daniel. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Today we have Marcus Daniel on. Marcus, welcome.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me. Pleasure to chat.

Gabby’s Games For Good Explained

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. I'm glad uh glad you're here. Glad you reached out. Um, I want to talk about your doubles career. Uh, I want to talk about doubles strategy, I want to talk about high impact athletes, which you started uh as well. But before we get to all that, uh I want to start with the reason you reached out to me, um, to talk a little bit about Gabby's Games for Good, um, which you started with uh Gabby Dobrowski, who's been on the podcast a number of times in the past. So tell people what is Gabby's Game Games for Good.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I definitely wouldn't have reached out for something for myself. Um, but good friend of mine, Gabby Dobrowski, one of the best women's doubles players in the world, I think she's ranked number two as we record right now. Uh, amazing person, and she's doing a fundraising campaign where for every game that she wins this year, and that's game, not match, um, she's giving$20 to something called the One and Three Fund. And the One and Three Fund is a collection of organizations that have a proven track record of doing really, really good work at preventing gender-based violence, so preventing violence against women and girls. The reason it's called the One and Three Fund is because globally, one in three women will experience sexual or physical abuse in their lifetime. When I first heard that stat, I was pretty blown away. Like it's it's a very shocking stat when you sit down and think about it. And, you know, as a recent father and you you're a soon-to-be father, thinking about, you know, if if you had a daughter and the chances globally are one in three, you know, 30-ish percent, um, that they're going to experience physical or sexual abuse, you'd want to do something about it. Um so that's what that's what this is. This is Gabby using her platform and using her own resources to uh to try to do something about uh this issue that she feels really strongly about. Um and I think what she's doing is amazing. Uh, I think she speaks about it really well, and she's already raised something like 10 grand so far. Um and yeah, I guess my my ask of everyone listening is to go and go and check it out. Um it's in the link of in her Instagram bio, or it's gamesforgood.1and3.org. Um, and yeah, throw in a donation or or make a smaller pledge alongside her. Um every$12.50 that's raised will provide one month free from violence for a woman or a girl. Uh that's that's a very conservative estimate based on very deep research. So, you know, a small amount of money, a couple of copies, goes a really long way, can be literally life-changing for a woman or a girl. And yeah, so I'll I'll stop ranting there, but I just think it's a beautiful thing that she's doing, and I I would love for more people to know about it.

Choosing Doubles Over Singles

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I want to um it's been a while since Gabby's been on, so I'll try to have her on and she can talk more about it. But we'll so we'll link to it in the show notes for people listening, so y'all can click on that. There's um a lot of information about how it works, and it um it's super easy to uh start donating. Um and then uh yeah, so I'll link to that. Everybody can click on it, donate if you can. Um you've got different options here: 10 cents, 25 cents,$1 per game. Um, tenants tribe, we're gonna do$2 per game. Um so hopefully, uh hopefully people can um match that or maybe even exceed it. And uh yeah, it looks like almost 10,000 so far, but the goal is a hundred thousand. So we've got a ways to go. So hopefully a lot of listeners. We've got a way to hopefully a lot of listeners are able to uh check it out and and donate some. Um but uh that's a really really cool story. And I want to get into high impact athletes and kind of one of the keys that you said is a proven track record for um this sort of work, right? Um so I want to talk about that a little bit later, but let's dive into doubles uh for a moment. So a little bit of a transition. Talk start uh to start, talk about your story. How did you get started in doubles to uh a pretty successful pro career um as well?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I think I should have been born 50 years earlier, and then I might have had a good singles career. Um I was always a lot more comfortable coming forward, like attacking, coming to the net, trying to finish off points at the net. Uh the only singles professional titles I won were on grass where that sort of play is is more rewarded. Um so I played both uh through my younger years and until I was, I think, about 24, 25, was playing both singles and doubles at all of the tournaments I'd play. Um and I got to about 500 in singles. Uh my doubles was slightly ahead. I think I was maybe in the 200s or something like that. Um and I reached a stage where uh I'd actually just won my second singles title on the grass in Ilkley. Uh and I had got into one of the very few challenger main draws I'd I'd been sneaking into in Canada. So played the final on the Sunday, had to leave straight afterwards, arrive and basically get off the plane and play my first match. I remember I got a beating from James McGee, could hardly see the ball, so I was out of singles, but I was still in doubles. And I was playing with Art and CTEC, and we won that week. Uh and it was the first, this was in Granby Canada. This was the first of four weeks in a row of challenges that I'd that I'd scheduled to play. Uh, and I was in the main draw of the singles in the first week, qualifying of the three afterwards. But I won the doubles in the first week, which meant that I missed qualifying of singles for the second week. And then again, I think I went like finals or win of the second challenger, and the same thing just happened for four weeks in a row, where I went deep in doubles, which meant that I missed qualifying of singles. And by the end of that four week stretch, I was I think slightly outside top 100 doubles, and my singles had slid a bit because I'd lost some points, so I hadn't defended some points. So then it became you know quite quite a heavy decision. It was like, okay, do I go and play challenger main draws and doubles, maybe try and sneak into some tour events and just bargain on qualifying in singles, or do I, you know, keep pursuing the singles career and um Artem really wanted to keep playing together, uh, so convinced me to play some more challenges for the rest of the year. And the same thing kept happening. I wouldn't go deep enough in singles, but I'd like make semi-finals or win of the doubles and miss qualifying for the following following event for singles. So end of the year, it actually had become a pretty simple decision that okay, my my two rankings had split so far apart that I may as well try and play big tournaments and doubles. Um and that was I think that was the that was 2014 that that happened. And so decided in 2015 to focus on doubles, and it actually it turned out to be a good decision pretty quickly because February of that following year we won Montpelier, which was a 250. Um, and then that kicked me into the ranking where I was, you know, that year I started playing the slams and and sort of from there was locked into the tour level. So yeah, it was it was an organic process, and you know, I'm I missed playing singles, but my game was definitely better suited to doubles. And I also like I grew up playing a lot of football and team sports, and I love it's almost a perfect balance for me of like there's enough individuality in doubles that if if you play badly, your team's probably gonna lose. But there's enough team energy that chemistry is really important, and you have to be thinking about the the team aspect. So yeah, I'm probably biased given that I had most of my success in doubles, but I I'm glad I made the decision when I did.

SPEAKER_01

Do you think about I feel like I hear that story almost every time I have somebody on the podcast, right? They're like trying to balance the singles and doubles ranking. And a lot of players I talk to are still trying to make that decision, right? Are still trying to um raise their singles ranking, which makes sense to me because it's you know, the the prize money is like 10x. So if you can somehow, you know, make it through in singles, like you've got to take the chance at it.

SPEAKER_00

Um do you like looking back, which you had made the decision earlier, or do you feel like it kind of happened at the right time uh looking back, I think it would have been smart, both from an injury perspective and from a like opportunities perspective, to have made the decision a lot earlier. I when I was 20, I think, um I randomly got a last-minute wild card into the Auckland ATP in 2010. Um and got paired up with Horia Takao, who had had never won a tour event at that stage either. So he was like the highest doubles player who hadn't got into the tournament, and I was the highest ranked Kiwi who hadn't got in, and the tournament director just thought give them both an opportunity. And we ended up yeah, we ended up just going on a dream run and winning winning the tournament out of nowhere, um beating beating some pretty hefty teams on on the way. Um and after that tournament, I was way too kiwi about it. Like my my response to winning it was okay, don't get a big head, you're still playing futures, like just keep grinding. What I should have done was go and play challenges in doubles and qualifying in singles. And if the same thing happens just four years earlier, where okay, my singles wasn't up to scratch to go deep into challenger events, but my doubles was good enough, then that organic process might have happened four years earlier, and I would have had four extra years of probably better health to um to make an impact. Because I think pretty soon after that I got a bad injury in my back and was out for a year, and then that yeah, just had a lot of injuries afterwards. So hindsight's always 2020. You know, there are a couple of big decisions that I wish I'd made differently. One of them was that was um not focusing on doubles earlier, and the other was not going to college in the States. I decided to turn pro instead. So those two things I'd do differently if I could have it all over again.

SPEAKER_01

Who had the biggest impact on your doubles game, or maybe who taught you the most for that that impacted your doubles game?

SPEAKER_00

Doubles specifically, I would say Louis Caillet. Um, but I I attribute most of my professional success to the guy I worked with for over a decade called David Sammel. Um he's a South African-born guy who's lived in the UK for 30 plus years. Uh he ran Bath Academy and I was based there for five, six years and kept working with him after after I moved. Um so he had a massive impact on me just in every aspect of the game. But then specifically for doubles, Louis Caillet uh he's known across the doubles world as being a bit of a genius with strategy, with positioning, with almost a formulaic approach to doubles, which can be quite boring, but man, it works. Um and it takes something pretty special and and talented to break the formula if you're playing against it. Um so yeah, I I was lucky enough to have a stretch with Dominic Englot uh I think in sort of 2017 or so. We we had some good results together, played together for six months before I got injured again, and then um I was out for a bit and he he found another partner. But in those six months, having little stretches with Louis and understanding the way they approach doubles, and also looking at video with him uh and and trying to understand what he saw, that was a step change in my understanding of what good doubles looks like.

The Chapel Of Bullshit Mindset

SPEAKER_01

Well, what's a key lesson? It could be related to singles or doubles, just just a tennis lesson that you learned from David.

SPEAKER_00

There's there's one massive one that sticks in my mind, and it's not it's not uh technique or anything like that. Um people swear on your shot.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not sure. We can try.

SPEAKER_00

So um it's gone down in history in Bath as the Chapel of Bullshit sermon. Okay. Um and in a nutshell, it is d just stop making excuses, I guess is the simplest way to sum it up. But the the slightly longer story behind it is I'd just been playing a challenger qualifying in Nottingham, lost a really close match and two tiebreakers and singles to a guy who was much higher ranked than me. I thought I'd tried pretty hard, like put a good effort in, came off court, did all my warm downs, shower blah blah blah, met Dave and another coach from Bath for a little debrief, and Dave essentially just laid into me and you know called me a tourist, and that I I hadn't been present in the game, that I was worshipping at the chapel of bullshit. Um, and I was quite taken aback to begin with. Uh, and he he centered it around this one thing that had happened in the game, which was I think it was like 3-2 in the first set tiebreaker, or some like very close score on the first set tiebreaker, and my opponent had got a net chord winner, and I looked at Dave and said, Oh man, it's not my day. And that sounds like a small thing, but if you think about it, it was a ridiculous thing to say, and it reflected a mindset that was I have a built-in excuse to not win this match. Opponent got one point from a net cord, and because of that, it's not my day, and it's not my day to win this match. And that was the thing that he pointed out. That's that's his sort of framing of worshiping at the chapel of bullshit. Like, there is no reason that that thing should mean that you shouldn't win this match or that it's not your day. And so just a small example, but what it led to was an agreement between me and Dave where in practice and in matches, there was a an absolute commitment to being 100% mentally present for every shot. And in practice, if there were three shots in a row that weren't 100% mentally present and we held each other accountable to this, then the training would finish. Um and for the first week I couldn't make it past about 40 minutes of of that level of intensity. Um, and I feel like I'm talking about a couple of different things here, but let me try and pull it together. So all of these excuses that your mind makes up and that you lean into because that's what we do as humans, we try to find the outs, think like tennis is hard, competing against people is hard, so we try and find these little outs for ourselves. If you remove all of that and and truly are 100% present in the moment and 100% focused, firstly, there's no room for excuses because you're just there and all of your focus is on the present. And secondly, it's exhausting. And that's why I couldn't keep it going for more than sort of 40 minutes. Because if you're that present for every single shot, you are just wrecked. And it takes time to build up the stamina to maintain that focus, not only mentally, but also physically. Because if you're that focused, then you don't shortcut on all of the little adjustment steps or being in the perfect position for a shot. So that conversation, the chapel of bullshit conversation, led to an understanding of what full mental intensity looked and felt like. And then that over time, I built stamina in that, and and there was like a very sharp inflection point in my ranking from that conversation to getting better and better and better and better results. Um and it's yeah, it's it's sort of hard to explain. But I think if people try it, just say like I'm going to be absolutely a hundred percent locked in for the next five minutes of training. If people try that, I think people will feel the difference between what that feels like and what a normal training session or normal hits on a tennis court looks like. And last thing I'll say on this is that this thing is why I have just huge respect for people like Djokovic and Nadal and the big four who could bring that level of intensity day in, day out, week in, week out for years and years and years and years while they had a big bullseye painted on their back, and they still managed to just hold on to that intense um focus because it's bloody exhausting.

SPEAKER_01

That's really good. I think you described that really well. Um I help coach a high school team here uh in my hometown, and we our practices are two hours. And one thing I tell them is look, I know you'll have school, I know y'all are trying to get into colleges, you have applications, all this stuff going on. And you can't give me 100% for two hours. But if you can give me 10 minutes or 30 minutes, just give me what you have today and go hard for those 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 minutes. And I'm gonna be happy with that, and we're going to get better. Um how would you advise someone listening to implement this who doesn't? Necessarily have David sitting there to yell at them. How can they they implement it for themselves? Somebody who doesn't necessarily hold them accountable.

SPEAKER_00

I think most of this, and especially if you're on the match court, it's you've got to keep yourself accountable. That's one of the beautiful things about tennis, is you like no one can do it for you. So the majority of tennis is being accountable to yourself, and good coaches help, but they they also can't do that when you're on the court playing a match. Um yeah, I I really like the the way you've communicated that to your high school team because I think I think putting a time period on it also gives you the difference between what 100% focus looks like and what normal looks like. And so as a piece of advice for for listeners, it would be for this game or for the next five minutes, I'm gonna absolutely lock in and nothing else distracts me, regardless of what happens. And then when that finishes, you think about it, you look at it, you think about it, how did that feel? What was different about that compared to what's normal for me? And part of the value of this is we're all human. No one can have a hundred percent perfect focus all the time for a five-set match. But where the best players in the world are better than everyone else is they'll notice when they slip out of that state and are much quicker at getting back in. So, you know, Nadal might have like one or two shots that look a bit weird because they're just unusual for him. And then he'll acknowledge it, he'll recognize where he slipped, and then he's straight back in. Whereas as you go down the rankings list, I think this is actually the biggest difference between the top players in the world and lower ranked players is both in training and especially in matches, they're much quicker to recognize when they've when they've fallen out of like the ideal mental focus and then getting themselves back into it. Um and to be able to to be able to identify that, you have to sort of be honest with yourself. And so, yeah, five minutes lock in, then have a think about it and be like, okay, how can I extend that to six minutes next time? How can I, if I fall out of it in that five minutes, how can I get back into that state as quickly as possible and not make three unforced errors in a row? If I can make two unforced errors and then back in, that's still a massive improvement.

How To Beat Marcus’s Game

SPEAKER_01

I like that. I like that a lot. I think people listening are going to be able to implement this like in a practical way. So I think that was really helpful. Um describe uh you've already done this a little bit, but describe your game style on the double court and then how you would coach someone to beat you. I can ask you this now that you're retired.

SPEAKER_00

Uh I was I would say creative and deft, and also a very good mover and anticipator and finisher at around the net. Um so yeah, I think my my biggest weapons were my volleys, my net play, and my returns actually became quite a weapon towards the end.

SPEAKER_02

Uh in terms of in terms of how to beat me. Play on clay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's probably the best thing that you can do. Play all the matches on clay. Um and neutralize me when I'm at the net, so quite a lot of lobs. I I really struggled against um people like Murray and Suarez because Murray was really good at lobbing, and that neutralizes you if you if someone lobs well, that sort of neutralizes the net player a bit. And then Bruno was just consistently one of the best returners on tour and could hold his returns, somehow could hold his returns for like half a second longer than other people and be able to see where you were going to try to poach and go the other way. So I just felt like when I was playing against them, I got on serve, we got so many less easy points finishing at the net. So that yeah, that's I found that really difficult. And the other, especially on clay, if you're playing against two big hitters, two like Kashinov Rublev, perfect example. Yeah, sometimes if you're not feeling on your game, they can just make you feel like a crappy tennis player because you know I can't match Rublev for pace. And if you're not serving well and they're just like running around and cracking forehands as hard as they want down the middle of the court, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, they kind of take it. There aren't too many players in the world.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. There aren't too many players who can hit that big, but the ones who can sometimes make you feel pretty stupid.

Olympic Bronze Under COVID Pressure

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, describe the uh Olympic bronze medal uh you won with Michael Venus in in Tokyo.

SPEAKER_00

Best moment of my career, hands down. Like um New Zealand's a very Olympic-centric country. We've I've been mad about the Olympics since I was a kid, and we always outperform uh the size of our country in terms of how many medals we get. So that yeah, the Olympics is always a big deal in New Zealand. And Mike and I actually we went to the Rio Olympics and we had match points in the third set tiebreaker against Nesta and uh Poshpassou in the first round and lost. Uh, and we were absolutely devastated. And I think they went on and played for bronze. Uh, and and we felt like if we got past them, we would have had a good chance of going deep. So we actually vowed to each other in Rio, we need to come back to an Olympics and do better. Um and then Tokyo was very strange with COVID. You know, it was delayed for a year and uh no crowds. The New Zealand team was being very, very strict about protocols. So we were wearing a mask everywhere, indoors, outdoors. Um, it was all pretty uncomfortable and not the sort of Olympic atmosphere you'd hoped for, because everyone was just being so careful. Um and also um a little extra sort of colour on this. Um, the tour had been back on for about a year by then, and I hadn't had a chance to go home for a long, long time. Uh, New Zealand, its borders were shut, and I couldn't get into a quarantine hotel. So I'd been essentially hotel to hotel on the road for like 12, 13 months by that stage, and I was exhausted and burnt out. The guy I'd been playing with for a long time, who I thought we were sort of going to go through to retirement together, had split with me at the start of the grass, which was like a month before the Olympics. And so I was just in this like one of the darkest head states I've I'd ever been in uh on tour. And actually, the the week before I went to the Olympics, I I knew I was in a really bad mental space, and um I went to my in-laws' house, which is a couple hours north of New York, and just put my tennis bag in the closet and didn't look at it for a week just to try to sort of hit refresh. So I got to Tokyo not having hit many balls, but trying to sort of mentally get in the right space and um did some really great work with a mental skills guy from the New Zealand team. Uh and I didn't tell Mike, my partner, that I was in this state, but uh he and I also had some really open, honest conversations about our doubles games and where we struggled and what our strengths were. And you know, we we play against each other all the time on tour, so I think it was a big step for us that we let our guards down that much to try and sort of do something for New Zealand. And then um, yeah, come come the bronze medal match. We'd got absolutely trounced in the semis by um Croatia, Shilich and and um Dodig, they just from the first ball were just on and just smashed us. Um Silich that day was an example of a serious player who can hit big, who just like hit it through us. Um and after that match, we went out and were on the practice court for about two and a half hours until dark, just like we've got one more shot at this, and how can we avoid what happened today? And I think the work that we did then and the preparation that we did for pressure moments, and like actually drilling down on very specific plays that we were going to use when pressure points came in and practicing those serves, and then practicing like the net player reacting to those serves based on who we were playing the next day, really put the hours in and the following day played very well, got tight for sure, but like played through the tightness. And um Randall ended up running away with it in the in the second set, and someone sent me a video of the last four points where we just both just like on fire, like four amazing finishes in a row against serve. Um and when it finished, uh one of the best moments of my life, and the thing that the thing that happened for me was obviously like elation, like euphoria, like holy crap, with we're bringing home a medal for New Zealand, but also just like massive relief because for the two weeks I've been there, I'd been suppressing this um this darkness. And it was like I like I want to do everything I possibly can to perform as well as I can during this. So I'm just pushing this down, pushing, pushing, pushing down. And then when we finished, it was like I didn't have to suppress that anymore. And it all just like all came out, and I was just like a sobbing wreck for 20, 30 minutes, and I'll always I'll always hate Mike for the fact that he never shed a single tear after we won that that medal. And I I was just an absolute wreck, and he was just like laughing at me. Um but uh but yeah, I guess we all handle things differently. But yeah, it was um it was it was extremely emotional, and I still get emotional thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing. What a story. Thanks for sharing. Um, yeah, I talked with uh just as you were going through that, it reminded me of my conversation, I think two years ago with Martillo Rivolo, and he talked about winning Rolling Garros during those two weeks. He he was so like locked in and in this like mental state of you know clarity and always turned on. And he he actually got physically like sick, like he had a cold a few days after winning um because he like let it down. It felt like more of an emotional thing. Um but it's it's interesting hearing these stories on of how players like react after the fact, right? Um, and what all is going on for them uh mentally and physically.

SPEAKER_00

Um talked about go ahead. Um I'm really not surprised. I think it's very common for a lot of athletes, I think tennis players in particular, to get sick in the offseason. And I've heard that there's a physiological reason for it where our cortisol levels are spiked for so long because we're just in the stress of tournament after tournament after tournament. And then when you give yourself permission to relax in the two weeks of holiday you get at the end of the year, then your cortisol drops massively and your immune system drops with it. It's like, oh finally, I don't have to have my guard up, and then then you get sick. And so often your the time that you're looking forward to, the two weeks of holiday you get, you're sick most of the time, and then you've got to start preseason again. But yeah, part of the grind.

A Simple System For Nerves

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, you you mentioned the pressure moments a few times. What are some keys to performing well under pressure? A lot of people ask me, you know, I people I'll get emails or messages on Instagram and they'll say, like, Will, I'm struggling with 10-point tiebreakers or tight matches, and I tend to double fault. What are some of the things that you did to help you yourself in those moments?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, did quite a lot of work, but especially during the Olympics, before the Olympics on this stuff, because it meant so much to me, I knew I'd get nervous when it came to the pressure moments. And the first big thing is I've seen some players, some players I've I've played with as doubles partners, do everything they can not to acknowledge that they're nervous. And for me, that's a terrible mistake. I think that's probably a terrible, terrible mistake for most people, and I didn't see it work with the partners I played with. Um so for me, the big first step is acknowledging that you're nervous, and the second step is understanding that that's normal. Like, of course you're nervous. If you're playing in something that feels high stakes to you, that's you're gonna get nervous because the stakes are high, and that's a normal human reaction, and even if you might not see it on the outside, everyone gets nervous. Like the best players in the world will still get nervous if they're trying to close out a Grand Slam final or whatever it is. So, first is acknowledging it, second is accepting it and understanding that it's normal. And then the third step is well, okay, I've still got a job to do. Like it's it's fine that I'm nervous, being nervous is normal. Now, what do I do about it? Well, okay, it's five all in the super tiebreaker, and I'm serving. I served 50 times earlier during the match, and regardless of how well or how poorly that went, I know that I can serve and get it in the box, so let's just go and do it. So the the first two steps are sort of the um having empathy for yourself steps, and then the third step is just shut up and and do your job. Like for me anyway, it was like get a little hard on yourself. Like, no, I'm I'm I'm still here to do a job. I want to win, I'm gonna go and do my bloody job. Um, and I can remember actually specifically in in that bronze medal match, I think I was serving and we were up a break at like 4-2 or 3-2 or something like that, and I got really nervous. And people watching thought that I was relaxed and under the surface, like I could hardly move my arm. But going through that thing before, literally going through those steps before every serve that I did meant that we got through the game, got through the match, and it looked sort of like a smooth surface at the end of the day. But yeah, I guess I guess the biggest takeaway is everyone gets nervous and it's normal, and then just go and do your job anyway.

Smarter Net Play In Doubles

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think that's a big misconception that like a lot of pro players just don't feel nerved or they somehow block out nerves. But I like the way you phrase that to acknowledge it and accept it first. Um two more doubles questions, and then we'll move on to um HIA. Uh you mentioned that you like to get to the net. Uh you it sounds like you're more comfortable up at the net. What are some tips you have for people listening to either improve their volleys or be more effective as a net player in doubles?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, it's gonna be difficult to generalize without showing.

SPEAKER_01

So we can start with servers partner. How about that?

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I think service partners generally are standing too far away from the net. If you're a service partner, you're in an aggressive position. So even if it's a second serve, you should trust that your partner's gonna hit a decent second serve. And particularly for first serve, your job as service partner is to find that return and finish it. Like as many points as possible, your job is to just finish the point then and there. Um, so I think a general thing that I've seen is you should be close enough to the net that you could essentially touch it with your racket with one diagonal step forward. So you want to be able to step forward diagonally to cut off the ball and not hit the net, but be as close as possible to the net that your angles are increased as much as they possibly can be. So by angles, I mean you can hit the ball down, you can hit the board ball either way, and if it comes fizzing just over the top of the net, if you sort of like just get your racket in the way and shank it, then it's got the highest chance of going back over the other side. Um yeah, that's the biggest one that I've seen.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I like that. Um, what what about returner's partner? That's a little tougher one.

SPEAKER_00

Returner's partner is tougher because it requires a lot more um reading of the game in anticipation. So, service partner, you should go in with a plan. Your partner's going to try to serve to this spot and you're going to move to this spot. These are the zones that you have to cover. And if they're in your zone, there's no excuse to not get a racket on it and try to finish the point. As returner's partner, you're in a reactive position. And so you're depending on your partner being able to get a good racket on the ball. Uh, some people like signing to know where their partner is going to return, if they're going to try to return down the line or liable cross-court. With the better returning partners I played with, we did that because they had a little more control over that, regardless of where the serve was. Um, but either way, I guess the generalizable tip would be when you see the quality of return, react accordingly. So if you see a good return that gets past the service partner, then your first move should be straightforward to the net. So, and and the reason to do that is if you see the return going past the net player, your job is to cut off as many angles as possible for the person who's gonna hit that next shot. And the the quickest way to do that is to move forward. That's just simple geometry. If you move forward, you cut down angles. Um, if it's a a poorer quality return, so if you see it sort of popping up for the server, or if you see the server's partner is gonna get a racket on it, then it's holding position and getting ready to try to react and deflect and stay on the point. Um yeah, that one's that one's a little more interesting and a little more reactive.

Making Pro Doubles More Popular

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for sure. Um so last doubles related question, not a strategy one, but um, this is when I ask all of my guests uh what needs to happen to make Pro Doubles more popular?

SPEAKER_02

I've got a few ideas.

SPEAKER_01

Big topic, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

A few things. So the product changes too much, and by that I mean there's too much changing of partners. People can support a singles player for uh two decades because they're the same person throughout. If you have doubles teams changing three times a year or every year, then you don't have the longevity to build a following over time. You you can't accumulate. Um, and I think I mean people from certain countries will follow their country men, their country people. Um but when you think about guys like the Bryans or like Cabal Farah, you know, the these partnerships that last for a long time that are both from the same country, I think they they have managed to leverage that into much better profiles, better deals, um, and just more interest and hype in general because of that longevity. And so I would be a fan of there being rules around, for example, if you partner with someone at the start of the year, you have to finish the year out unless there's injury or something like that. Something to make the product of doubles teams more certain and one that you can you know follow throughout an entire season. The other, which is a simple one, um, is just colours. Like I understand that different clothing sponsors have different things that they require players to wear, but like looking like a team, I think, is a good one, also in terms of product. Um, and then there's this huge chicken egg argument that I I am really biased around, but I just don't know how it would be best dealt with is the marketing of it. Um Obviously, doubles players get a tiny portion of the attention of singles players. I do think it might be anathema to say this on a doubles focused podcast, but like the top singles players in the world are the best tennis players in the world. Um, and I think a lot of them, if they focused on doubles, would be amongst the top doubles players in the world. It's definitely not one-to-one. Like doubles skill set and understanding is it's a separate skill set, but the top singles guys are just such good tennis players that I think they could they could become top doubles players. So I I don't believe that it should be absolutely equal, but I think the disparity is way too big at the moment. And I think a lot of people really like playing and watching doubles, especially at the club level. It's a great game. And so how do you give more exposure lights um storytelling to doubles in a way that's going to interest people? And that requires investment. Um, so you the ATP would have to take a punt on it, and I think they've sort of been leaning further and further the opposite way of like doubles is just sort of a useless appendage, or maybe the only value is in as a scheduling tool so that there's no dead TV time or whatever. I think that really undersells doubles. And the the two product things that I spoke about, I think would help with uh being able to market doubles and get teams more well known and get more people interested and wanting to come to tournaments to see doubles teams. So yeah, it's like it's hard to get the first bit of momentum to build that flywheel. But but I think once it's going, like, yeah, people people love playing and watching doubles.

High Impact Athletes And Effective Giving

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's what I've found. I think a lot of uh a lot of people who listen to this podcast or follow our Instagram channel tend to, you know, uh there's a market out there for it. Like they they do like to watch it, and it those are some great ideas. Um awesome. Well, let's talk about high impact athletes. So most tennis players, most doubles players, uh I I guess doubles especially um because the doubles players aren't paid as highly. They have another career after they retire from tennis, and most of them work in tennis, but you went kind of a different direction. Why did you start HIA?

SPEAKER_00

Well, initially I started high impact athletes because uh COVID had hit and the tour had stopped, and at the start of 2020, I made a personal commitment to give eight percent of what I earned on tour that year to charity. But then the tour stopped, and eight percent of zero dollars is zero. Like I, you know, if I wasn't on a tennis court winning tennis matches, then I wasn't earning money. And so I thought, well, I I want to figure out how to make an impact in in some way, and if I can't give more to charity, then what else can I do? And I realized actually, so going back to what we spoke about earlier, um in 2015 when I when I started focusing on doubles, that's the first year where I actually made made money from tennis, where I covered my expenses and and you know was able to save a little bit. And that year I got this really strong urge to give back because tennis is really selfish. You take from the world, you take from your coaches, from your parents, from your community, and that's necessary, but I it never sat well with me as the sort of person I wanted to be in the world. And so I wanted to give back, but I didn't trust the charities I'd grown up around. So I just like went deep into Google and tried to find charities that I trusted to do good things with what I gave them. And it led me to the space of effective giving, which in a nutshell is just a deep amount of research, really rigorous research research that identifies the charities that do the most good with each dollar that you give them. Uh, that really resonated with me as sort of like a high-performance way to give. And so I started giving to some of those charities and like made a percentage pledge and built that up over time. And I'd been doing that since 2015 through to 2020, and yeah, had built that percentage pledge up to 8% that year and felt really good about it. But the realization I had during COVID was I'd never spoken about it. And and it's it feels uncomfortable to speak about this stuff because you don't want people to think that you're just like virtue signaling and trying to make out like you're this great person. But the uncomfortable part of the realization was even if I was uncomfortable talking about it, if by talking about it one other person decided to support these incredible charities, then that would be a huge amount of good done in the world and like people's lives being changed just for me getting over my own discomfort. And so when I did the equation of like, should I do this, shouldn't I? I was like, absolutely, I should start talking about this. And that was what led to high impact athletes. Was I have a relatively small profile, but you know, I've been lucky enough to get to know some of the biggest tennis players in the world. If I resonate with this approach to charity of like doing high performance giving, then maybe other athletes will too. Um and so yeah, I just like figured out how to make a really basic website and started speaking to some tennis players about it. Um and launched it publicly December 2020, and never can never thought it would be a job or a I thought it was just gonna be me pestering my friends on the tennis tour about these charities. And very quickly, by the Aussie Open of the next year, so like two months down the line, it was obvious that there was a real appetite for this approach to charity. And so fast forward to today, and we have over 200 athletes in the in the community, and those are the ones we work more closely with. We have sort of over 400 athletes in the wider community. We've raised something like six to seven million for the charities that that we support. Um and it's been just an incredible journey. And one other thing I'll say about HIA, because I I guess it's it's different to most charities, and it's important because it's different. We never take anything from the athletes. So if an athlete decides to give to these charities, or if their fans decide to give to the charities, 100% of that donation goes to where it does the most good. That's always been the case. Because I never wanted to look at my peers and say, like, hey, you should give to this charity, and I'm gonna take 5% and put it in my back pocket. So it's always been pure, we we have no incentive other than to help athletes do a lot of good in the world. Like we don't get a kickback from the charities or anything like that. Um, it's it's all completely independent. So that's really important. And what that means is that we've had to fund operations separately through a group of high net worths who believe in what we're building and in and the thing that we're trying to do in the world and some grant funding. Um, and it's yeah, it's grown to the stage where um we've had to grow as a team. And so it actually became really easy for me when I retired to be like, yeah, I want to spend all of my time doing this. I'm really passionate about it. I started it with money from my own back pocket trying to make it a real thing. Um, and now the fact that you know we've we've got a team of I think it's about eight full-time people now, and we're we're having to grow further because of this huge partnership. We last year we became the global charity partner for HIROX, which is like a fitness um fitness race thing. So we're gonna have like 50,000 people through this mass participation um project that we're doing alongside the elite athlete stuff. So yeah, there's um there's been a lot going on, and we're we're a small team with massive goals, and it's what I've been pouring myself into since since I retired, and I feel very lucky because I've I've not felt a um sort of a void or anything. I've just been super busy since um since I stopped playing tennis.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. That's a that's a really cool story. Um I love this idea of effective charities. Uh it's something that I um I I'd never thought about until I think it was like 10 years ago or something. I I used to listen to the the Tim Ferris show and they had Will McCatkill on, who I think kind of started a lot of the this concept. Um you're shaking your head, so I'm sure you're super familiar with him. Uh but I remember listening to that and thinking like, oh, like every time a charity is asking me for money, I have no idea how much of that money is actually going towards the you know, the thing that they say that it's going towards, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. So I'm I'm really glad that you've uh you came across this on your own. It's actually not common, I think, for for people to have had that thought of actually like what does if I give, what does it actually do? And the whole the whole approach that we take to charity is let me let me use an analogy. If if you were going to invest in a business, you would want to deeply understand every lever that that business uses to create a good outcome. And you would want a return on your investment. It should be exactly the same in the charity space. The difference is in the business world, if you don't do a good job, you go bankrupt and you go out of business, and we don't hear of those businesses ever again. In the charity world, it just has to have enough people who don't understand or um you know are giving without really thinking about giving. And these these nonprofits can just trundle along year after year after year without really making an impact. And there are something like 10 million nonprofits in the world. So it's really difficult to find the very, very best ones. But the research organizations that we work with spend tens of thousands of hours a year finding the best ones. And if you direct your giving to the best ones, it can literally be tens, hundreds of times more impactful than even just the average charity at doing good in the world. So I like if I was to think about the larger vision for high-impact athletes, it would be that everyone in the world who has the capacity to give thinks really carefully about what their giving is going to do and where it goes to before they pull the trigger on it. Because if you think carefully about it and do a bit of research, then just by directing to the best charities, we can, as a whole, as a world, we can just do multiples more good without even giving more. So that alone would just be a massive, massive improvement in the quality of the world. And I just think, yeah, like not enough people know that that's a choice that they make, um, or that there are better options available.

Final Ask And How To Help

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. It makes so much sense, like once you realize it. But a lot of people don't think about it. Yeah, a lot of people don't think about it or they they just haven't been educated on it. But um anyways, uh uh this was a ton of fun to talk about. Um, Marcus, I'm gonna link to Gabby's games for good. We're gonna try to get Gabby on here soon. I know she's super busy uh over in Europe um trying to win more games so that we can donate more money. Uh Tennis Tribe is gonna do$2 per game. She said she expects to win 600 games this year. Um, so people can check that out and uh yeah, donate there. Um any final request to the audience before we hop off here?

SPEAKER_00

Just a big thank you for um for giving me the time and being able to talk about Gabby's campaign and also for high-end backed athletes. And also thank you for the contribution. That's really cool. You're leading the way. Um I think 100,000 is a big goal for Gabby, but we have some activations that are coming uh during, especially during the Toronto tournament, um, which is sort of her her home masters or premiere or whatever they call it. Um so that'll be exciting. And yeah, just the the ask is just to check out check out her campaign. It's beautiful. It's you know, every$12.50 is a month of safety. And if you think about what that actually means in the real world, that's pretty incredible. Um so yeah, check it out if you feel motivated to give. We and Gabby and the world would really appreciate it. Um, but yeah, just really appreciate the time to talk about this stuff. And I forgot how much I miss uh talking and thinking about doubles.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks, Marcus.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks a lot, With.