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[Music] mate it is so good thank you so much for coming over I really appreciate it
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Marcus Daniel um New Zealand's best male tennis player oh I can't claim that man to Mike Venus
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uh definitely Pips me there I'll claim number two okay Pantheon I don't no uh well I just
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Googled and it ranked New Zealand's goat tennis players uh the greatest of all
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time um this is a horrible opening question but where do you think you would where
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do you think this website Pantheon placed you in terms of New Zealand's guides number one Anthony Wilding yeah
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that's without a doubt it I think it ultimately depends on how you weight singles versus doubles ah so
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I'd I think I'd put Mike Venus number two because he's won a grand slam
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interesting uh uh I think I'd put Chris Lewis number three finalist at it was
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Wimbledon right Wimbledon Pharmacy yeah 83 I think it was and by the way you did right there
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Chrysalis is number three uh uh are we so I'm actually my mind went straight to men I should include yeah
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this is mean sorry okay men uh our economy might be like number five or six ding ding ding you are so
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it's um Anthony Wilding on a parent ah yeah I forgot uh Chrysalis number three
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Michael Venus number four and you Marcus Daniel number five what about Kelly evendon was he I remember him we were a
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tennis family growing up so I wear tennis on all the time should he not be ahead of you I mean the fact the fact
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that he did it on one lung you know yeah it probably should be um it's great to have you here um
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I hope this is an embarrassing but um I want to I want to bring this up because um I thought this was really cool you
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you reached out to me about coming onto the podcast and I I'm stoked about that
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and you're not the first person to do that um and I really really appreciate
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it um but that must mean there is something in particular you want to talk about or get off your chest or promote
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what is it yeah so why did you reach out this is so we were speaking a little earlier about tour poppy syndrome and so
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in 2020 I founded a non-profit called high impact athletes and I'm incredibly
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passionate about it I believe that we have the potential to do a huge amount of good in the world and basically the
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realization that led me to want to start high impact athletes was I I had been involved in the charity space for five
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or six years myself donating a decent percentage of my own income to charity but I'd never spoken about it publicly
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public publicly and the reason I hadn't spoken about it was because I'm a kiwi
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and I have tall puppy syndrome and I never wanted to sort of put myself out there as like hey I'm I'm
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doing this this thing that I think is good uh but the realization was by not talking about it I may have just lost
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the opportunity to make more impact you know if someone enjoys the ideas then maybe they'll start donating and and
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making a positive impact on the world and you know there was years of opportunity cost there so uh
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yeah the the reason I I reach out is I really want to get high impact athletes known around the world I want to get the
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idea of giving back more popular and mainstream culture and and especially and more accurately the idea of trying
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to give really effectively so you know there are literally millions of charities in the world yeah and tens of
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thousands in New Zealand alone it's incredibly difficult to know which are the good ones and so what we do at high
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impact athletes is work with the best research organizations to identify the best Charities and if you just direct
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your donations to the right place it can go literally hundreds of times further so that's that's the message that I'm
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really passionate about getting out yeah what do you mean a Good Charity in terms
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of like the the overheads and how much of the money gets it gets to where it's
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supposed to is that what you mean or that's definitely one of the metrics so
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I think all of the sort of Scandal stories in the charity space are yeah you know like 80 goes to filling the
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CEO's pockets and the the extra 20 goes to actually trying to do some good so
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that's one aspect and transparency is is very very important in this space and
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it's probably not prevalent enough in the space um but the other thing and probably the
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most important thing is measuring impact over time so it's really good to spend
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money on on interventions that we think are going to be good but if they don't
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turn out to actually have an impact over time then there's sort of a waste of
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money yeah and a lot of Charities will do the outputs so they'll measure the
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interventions that they do but they won't measure you know like two years out has it actually had a lasting impact
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or five years out has it had a lasting impact so what really matters is the outcome right what really matters is
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that we're actually making a positive impact on the world so the Charities that we work with they they basically do
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the best measuring and if you do good measuring then you you actually know what what your donation is doing what
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the money that you're spending is doing why are you you mentioned before that
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you were sort of donating uh donating you know money under the sort of cover of Darkness because of the tall poppy
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thing um it must have been a big call let's see you're you know you're you're a
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young pro tennis player in your 20s probably not sure where your next you know checks coming from I don't know I'm
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guessing it's a week to week sort of existence um that seems like a big call giving
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away some of your money yeah and to be honest it only only felt like I could when I started breaking
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even from tennis so that probably I think that happened in maybe 2014 was the first year that I actually made
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enough prize money that I covered expenses and when that happened and and that was
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around the time that I started focusing on doubles I actually felt like I could have a career in this thing you know and
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actually put some money away in the bank which was a lovely feeling after you know dedicating 10 years of my life to
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it um but then with that little sense of Financial Security it was like well I had this really strong urge to give back
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and sport is selfish like All Sport regardless of whether it's team sport or
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individual sport like we're propelled by this really strong desire to sort of
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rise to the top and that's necessary like the selfishness is necessary but it
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never sat perfectly with who I wanted to be away from tennis and also for me it was you know like
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even when you're not making money from tennis you're flying around the world
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for 10 months of the year and and playing all these tournaments and carbon Footprints huge and that never sat well
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so when I when I first felt like I had the ability to give back it was like okay I really want to but how and that
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was actually when I discovered this this area of effective giving because you know like a good Millennial I jumped on
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Google and and basically typed in like how how to give back best or something like that
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and yeah eventually came to this idea of well if you're going to give back it
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makes sense to to give back in the best way that you can and being an athlete you know optimization is just part of
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the everyday vocabulary you know we're we're trying to get the most we can out
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of our bodies every single hour of training and just to playing that same framework to charity made sense so with
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um hia high impact athletes um do you do like a percentage of your money each year how does it work so I I personally
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made a commitment uh at the start of 2021 to give a minimum of 10 for the rest of my life and that like for me
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that feels really good it was a journey as well I started in 2016 I think was the first year I made a pledge at one
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percent and just built up over time but high impact athletes is it's more of a
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community and educational platform so we speak to athletes from all around the world we have around over 165 athletes
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from over 30 different countries around 40 different sports who all want to use their platforms and their careers to do
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good and pledging is sort of the the biggest ask of our athletes so the pledge is two
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percent or more of of annual income but athletes can come on at whatever they feel is right for them because
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a reality that I think not enough people outside of sport know is that the majority of athletes are are really not
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not making a lot of money you know um I know yeah geez it must be exhausting hardest way to make an easy
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living yeah yeah honestly I think so you know the amount it's all encompassing
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what you have to put into it and you know most Olympic athletes are scratching a living it's the very lucky
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small percentage that actually do really well out of sport so it's meeting athletes where they're at
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um you know if if they're able and willing to donate which you know luckily being from New Zealand most of us can
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give something whether it's you know the the cost of a cup of coffee a month or
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whatever um but the other thing that we as athletes can use as voice and that's you
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know part of why I reached out is I think uh for better or worse and and maybe this
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is undeserved in in a lot of cases but we have a louder voice than a lot of other people in in society and you've
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got a platform yeah exactly and you know the sport sector is mainly used to sell
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stuff and I'm hoping that we can use that clout and that influence to to do some good in the world good for you good
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so anyone that's listening to this how is there anything they can do absolutely
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I mean came up with a little phrase that I quite like which is you know you you you
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can be LeBron James or James LeBron but every every dollar that you give does the same when it gets to the Charities
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right like we're trying to use the the voice of athletes and and you know create a movement around athletes But
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ultimately we want all of the people who follow athletes to get involved like that's that's how I think the snowball
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grows is people hearing good ideas and saying you know what that that sounds pretty cool and and you know if you go
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to highimpacts.org sorry for the little pitch here no not at all go ahead it's
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it has all of our recommended Charities we don't take any cut of any money that's donated whether it's from an
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athlete or from anyone in in the public uh and you know with these Charities you
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can just do a huge amount of good I mean one one thing is for the cost of a cup of
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coffee you can give someone access to clean water for three people sorry give three people access to clean water for a
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year so if a charity is really cost effective then that's the sort of impact
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that we can make on people's lives and I think that's pretty damn special
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let's come from is this just is it how you were raised is the rest of your family like this
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you you um I don't know it just seems like you're very immature uh when I was your
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age I was a [ __ ] mixer you're giving money to a charity would have been the
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last thing how old are you 30 33 33 last thing on my mind at 33. I know maybe it's a good bluff
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um no no no it cannot be I'm not going to accept your modesty it can't be a
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bluff like it's got to come from a genuine place you're not doing this for
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clout well so I think my family is generous in general um I think I'm I'm really really lucky to
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have an older brother who's always been a questioner of things and you know like
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I guess most younger brothers I'd copy him and pretty much everything when we
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were younger and and he's always sort of question what's right and wrong and had
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his own way of thinking about that and so when I was in my young 20s and I was sort of doing a University degree
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alongside tennis doing some philosophy papers came across a guy called Peter singer who is
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probably one of the world's most influential philosophers at the moment and he wrote a book called the life you
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can save and he has he has this essay it's it's now become quite a famous
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essay it's called the the drowning child essay or something like that and the broad Strokes are sounds
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like a rom-com it's it's definitely it's a punch in the face but it's so imagine you're you're
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wearing a nice suit that you just bought recently a nice pair of shoes you're
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walking to work uh and there's like a shallow Pond like a foot deep Pond that
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you're walking past and then you notice that there's a child drowning in the
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pond and of course you can just walk in and say save this child but you realize that you're wearing your nice new
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expensive suit and if you jump in you probably ruin this thing that costs you you know a couple thousand dollars
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do you walk into the pond and save the child and no brainer right exactly right so
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everyone has this emotional response of course you'd walk into the pond and save
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the child and Peter singer's uh question to us is well why aren't we doing that
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every day because just because the child is not in front of us drowning in a pond
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for a similar amount of money we can literally be saving lives in the poorest places in the world and actually that's
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like this idea that a life is worth a life regardless of where it is that's a
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real key part of high impact athletes because our money can just do so much more good in the poorest places in the
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world so reading that essay and you know reflecting on my own life and what I could and couldn't do and how I wanted
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to act in the world that was it was powerful for me and you know it took me a while to sort of act on it but all of
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those sorts of arguments have yeah I guess just over time I found I couldn't
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turn away from them yeah oh good for you good for you yeah I'd like to think I'm
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quite altruistic now I'm quite reasonably generous but I that wasn't until a point in my life where I was
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comfortable and established myself right so the fact that you're trying to you
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know I don't know like feather your own beard or feather your own nest whatever
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you want to phrase it and and also give it the same time I think that's remarkable oh thank you and I you know I
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also I think I'm incredibly lucky I mean you know I grew up in New Zealand's a
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lot of rapid eye Frozen comes to write it up but you know loving family you know had all the
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support that I could ever want and and just by virtue of being born in a high income country I mean like we're we're
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the lucky ones in the world and and I think recognizing that helped me to be more generous early on because they're
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ultimately like most people in a high income country can give say one percent of their income and
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not notice a drop in the quality of their life yeah absolutely so if that's the case like why not you can if you can
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help hundreds of people yeah so who's in your family I know your sister is um
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Jess from Jess's underground kitchen yeah who else you got a brother you mentioned a brother yeah Josh uh he's
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he's CEO of a fintech company now called akahu um he grew Snowball Effect which is an
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equity crowdfunding platform from he was he was sort of the first CEO of that um yeah very intelligent guy and and is
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making some waves in the fintech space and yeah I think lucky to have siblings who who pushed me along and we will pull
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each other in different directions like a high performing family so you're almost like or the family
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yeah I'm I'm definitely the dumb one in the family amazing wow God your parents
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must be so proud all right all right um okay we'll go all the way back so um
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you're from masterton you say we are in the water level yeah or grew up uh first
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few years so I'm from a farming family yeah um grew up sort of 30 minutes outside masterton and dairy farm or
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chicken beef or Ram breeding more accurately um and then moved about 10 minutes outside masterton when I was about four
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or five to for us kids to go to school in masterton yeah and and um you were playing tennis from a very young age I I
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heard a podcast you did and you talked about having um like a tennis ball hanging in a hanging in a stocking yeah
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yeah that was mum's genius way of keeping me occupied for hours at a time how old how old are we talking
00:15:36
so it's kind of like Tiger Woods in a way you know you see footage of Tiger Woods um on like TV shows working a golf
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ball when he's a similar age yeah you were just like heading heading heading
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balls from a very young age I was I think the difference if I remember Tiger's story correctly it was somewhat
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forced on him was it yeah like for me it was I just I just dragged the racket around right everywhere was it a tennis
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family yeah but well my parents played uh well I guess recreationally they they played you know they represented
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wadarapa at its rep level so they could play um but never took it seriously yeah uh
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but on at The Farmhouse there's an old concrete Court there and you know long
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summer evenings they'd jump out and hit some balls around after the farm day had
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finished and my older siblings would jump out and so I'd want to jump out and
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I think it just sort of you know it was just fun and it was it was purely fun really until I was
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probably about 15 like yeah until I I moved out to boarding school here in Auckland to try and sort of be a bit
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more serious about it but until then it was just like a summer sport that I did alongside all sorts of other ones
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yeah um so would you say you naturally naturally talented or you just did the hours you know these um Malcolm
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gladweller he's got a book called The Tipping Point he talks about the 10 000
00:16:54
hour Theory like ten thousand hours to get to get you know it's good pretty much as good as what you're going to get
00:16:58
and anything but you I suppose if you're starting at two you would have got your
00:17:01
ten thousand hours under your belt quite a quite a young age actually I think probably not because I didn't play that
00:17:07
much yeah you know like yeah in summer I was doing all sorts of other stuff you know we were going
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hiking surfing from a pretty young age like basketball um yeah I reckon I was actually behind
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the international level until I was probably sort of early 20s uh terms of hours yeah oh
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um but you you so were you just sort of naturally good then because I heard stories about like you as a boy like
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beating grown-ass men yeah the truth was that what like loaded up it doesn't have the
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deepest pool of talent but if you but if you're a primary school aged kid like
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it's still you're beating an adult is still a big thing I think yeah so I think there was some natural
00:17:50
Talent uh yeah yeah there was natural talent and I think that took me that took me quite far it took me to
00:18:00
like the top National level in age groups and that sort of stuff but then you know so I I went to Europe for the
00:18:07
first time when I was 17 and that was a punch in the face that was like oh you just realized how [ __ ] you were yeah
00:18:13
exactly you know for tennis very small pond here in New Zealand so I was like okay you know I can just sort of this is
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this is what I need to do to be a top tennis player you get over there and it's just like it's a completely
00:18:24
different level and uh and yeah I mean the first three or four weeks that I so I landed in Slovakia
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and just jumped in the deep end in terms of training I was like sort of six seven
00:18:36
eight hours a day couldn't straighten my arms for the first like four weeks because I just never done that sort of
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training before and ultimately that was too much training but yeah man it's it's
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I think there's more of an understanding now in New Zealand the type of work you
00:18:52
have to put in to make it at an international level but I just had no idea wow um a couple of things first of all I
00:18:59
want to know why you went to boarding school in Auckland so you're in you're
00:19:02
in um the widered airport why don't you go to like self-estream or in Wellington
00:19:05
or boys high in palmy purely purely tennis uh so how do you mean there were maybe three or four schools
00:19:15
in New Zealand that had a tennis academy where you could be guaranteed you know say two to three and a half hours of
00:19:22
tennis training a day uh two or three of those are in Auckland so I went to I visited a few
00:19:29
um and went to Saint Kent's for two years um and that was good there was a stepping stone you know it was
00:19:35
definitely an increase in the amount of training and then ultimately I did my um
00:19:39
I did my last year of school bike correspondence from from over in Slovakia and yeah why Slovakia that's
00:19:46
really it seems like a random place to I mean if you said Florida and you're
00:19:51
going to Nick what's his name yeah like has a training academy which has produced so many champions that would
00:19:56
make sense what's in Slovakia not not much um yeah so I was working with a Slovak
00:20:03
coach here in New Zealand and he sort of convinced me that Slovakia would be a big jump
00:20:08
and yeah I went over there I think I just turned 17. and he took me to his hometown which was like a like 50 000
00:20:16
people this little town up in the mountains in eastern Slovakia and you know he was the only other person
00:20:22
there that I knew who spoke English and slovakians apparently one of the hardest
00:20:26
languages in the world to learn it's got an insane amount of different basically
00:20:30
doesn't have rules for a lot of the stuff um and it wasn't a step up uh and so after a
00:20:39
few months you know I tried to sort of get guts it out and you know inherited some stubbornness from my mother so
00:20:43
didn't really you know admit very quickly that it wasn't great but then knew I needed to change so uh moved to
00:20:51
the capital city to Bratislava and trained it in an academy there and to be fair like they had a few good tennis
00:20:57
players at the Academy and um yeah eventually spent I think between two and three years based out of there and in
00:21:04
hindsight I'd definitely do it differently like I'd probably go to college in the states
00:21:08
um or at least pick a country that was closer in culture to New Zealand yeah um yeah it's a lot at that age 17. yeah
00:21:18
and Slovakia was different then too like it felt very post-communist like it was
00:21:22
it was pretty pretty grim and harsh and like a very different attitude towards people in general I
00:21:30
think like the the way I describe it when I was there was if you bump into someone by accident on the street in New
00:21:36
Zealand you both apologize right so I'm sorry you bump to someone there they yell at
00:21:40
you you know it's like this different sort of harshness or something um and I eventually I found it
00:21:46
I felt like my personality was changing there so I that sort of scared me so I ended up leaving and and then uh found
00:21:54
the coach that I still work with to this day uh in in England and was based there
00:21:58
for a long time is that is that Dave Samwell it is yeah yeah so he um he he has a phrase called um The
00:22:05
Traveler [ __ ] yeah which I've heard you talk about on a couple of podcasts
00:22:08
what um how would you describe the chapel of bullshep the chapel of [ __ ] is when you
00:22:14
believe your own excuses and you let them get in your way where most excuses are [ __ ] and yeah
00:22:24
that's so he just calls you know worshiping at the chapel of [ __ ] is just believing your own excuses and and
00:22:29
letting them trip you up and it's so I mean it it really is I think it's
00:22:34
it's present in every different area of life and I think in sport it just gets
00:22:40
magnified and you can sort of identify them more easily um yeah you know like and it and it I think
00:22:47
what what uh conceived the chapel of [ __ ] chat originally was I think I was playing a
00:22:54
match and it was really close and we were in the tie breaker and the guy got a lucky net cord and I lost the point
00:23:01
and I think I turned to Dave and was like oh man it's not my day which is absolute [ __ ] right you're
00:23:07
you're in a you're in a tiebreaker which means your neck and neck and you lose
00:23:11
one point and over the course of a match okay like there are pressure points and
00:23:16
tipping points and that sort of stuff at one point you know it doesn't have to
00:23:19
mean that much and that's I think what set him off and um yeah it's it's fun it's fun actually
00:23:26
trying to identify these these you know chaplain [ __ ] moments and yeah you're smiling when you when you say
00:23:31
that uh does he tear you a new one oh yeah yeah really so I lost that match and two tiebreakers and I thought I
00:23:38
played pretty well like I thought I fought hard oh it's a close game close game against
00:23:43
the guy who was a lot better rank than me and so it's a game you should have
00:23:47
lost so you took but that's chaplain [ __ ] as well okay right like should should doesn't really exist on the day
00:23:54
anyone could be anyone I'm a good player on grass we're playing on grass courts
00:23:58
like should doesn't need to factor into that equation but so I'd warm down had a shower came
00:24:06
out to chat go over the match you know it's sort of like a routine after a match and he was there with his sort of
00:24:12
two IC at the time sat down at the table and he just like launched into me for like an hour and a half two hours like
00:24:17
he and when he gets going he can really go and he's like a he's a big dude too
00:24:22
he's like six five like heavyset guy and I was I was pretty shocked I think the
00:24:28
the first thing he said to me in that chat was you are a [ __ ] tourist and what he meant by that was I thought that
00:24:37
I was trying hard I thought that I was putting everything into it but because I was mentally letting these little
00:24:41
excuses sort of Weedle their way into my brain if you're not 100 mentally there then
00:24:47
you're not there like you're not trying 100 um if that makes any sense and yeah then
00:24:53
then he went on to the Chapel of [ __ ] and you know it took me I think sort of 20 or 30 minutes to
00:25:00
to come around but then so for the first 20 or 30 minutes you're sort of like
00:25:04
arguing throwing points back at him or I was Defensive yeah like because I felt like I'd tried hard and then it started
00:25:12
clicking what he was saying that oh yeah that excuse wasn't necessary or maybe
00:25:17
I'll let that affect me more than I should have and so you know over the time I was like okay this this actually
00:25:22
makes sense and it was painful I mean but but that's the beauty of sport and
00:25:26
how short the feedback loops are right like you you can do something bad and you know pretty instantly like that it
00:25:33
was bad and and you can work on improving it straight away um so we made an agreement that day that
00:25:41
going forward in training if I switched off I think the agreement was if I switched off for three shots in a row it
00:25:48
was either two or three shots in a row then training over and we'd both agree
00:25:53
on what was a switch off and what wasn't but for the first week or so I don't
00:25:57
think I made it past like 30 or 40 minutes of training and it was just the the thing that shocked me and where
00:26:04
I knew that we were on something good was it was exhausting like I was exhausted after 30 minutes of training
00:26:11
just like mentally exhausted yeah but because you're so mentally switched on
00:26:14
it means you do everything physically better and if you're doing everything physically better then physically it's
00:26:19
exhausting too like you know you take those extra sort of three positioning steps before each shot because that's
00:26:25
what you should do and you're not just sort of coasting through a training session so that was really interesting
00:26:30
and then that sort of stamina built up over the weeks and that was actually the start of me having more success and
00:26:37
tennis was that conversation so that 90 minute conversation it changed your life
00:26:43
really yeah I would say it it did and I credit Dave with with most of the professional success I had in tennis
00:26:51
like I've had a lot of coaches and mentors uh who who were a huge help but in terms
00:26:57
of sort of turning a corner at the professional level then him and you know the years of work that we put in and
00:27:03
that chat in particular I think really made a step change yeah let's talk about
00:27:07
some of the um professional success with the um would you say the bronze at the last Olympic games from Tokyo as the
00:27:13
like the Pinnacle of your career like without a doubt yeah yeah leagues ahead yeah how good so that was the the covert
00:27:19
Olympics it was postponed a year yeah so you've been to two you went to the Rio
00:27:23
games in 2016 and the Tokyo game so I suppose you can compare the two so you had like a normal Olympics and a
00:27:28
pandemic Olympics um yeah let's go to Rio first so how was the Olympic experience you're a kid from
00:27:36
masterton at Rio for the [ __ ] Olympic Games it's it's such a cop-out to say
00:27:42
Indescribable but it's just like just like draw on the floor Eyes Wide Open and it was Mike Venus's first Olympics
00:27:51
as well and we were just like we had bikes in Rio which is like biking around the village just like looking at
00:27:56
everyone you're a [ __ ] tourist yeah yeah absolutely we're terrorists and I
00:28:01
would say it wasn't a normal Olympics in Rio either because there was the whole
00:28:04
zika virus here then so you know there was a bit of fear in the air uh the the Olympic Village was um
00:28:14
was put together so the last minute you know had you had buildings that were sort of malfunctioning one guy uh one
00:28:20
Martin del Potro um he was playing like a quarterfinal against Djokovic or something and his
00:28:27
elevator broke down in his building so he's like stuck in the elevator for an
00:28:30
hour and a half so and oh actually one time I remember uh there were really high winds and and we were Mike and I
00:28:37
were eating lunch in the in the food area and heard this huge smash it's like
00:28:43
I think it was one of the biggest tents in the world and uh and this big slab of
00:28:49
plaster had fallen down from the roof like 30 40 meters overhead just in front of the door like two meters away from a
00:28:56
group that had just walked in because of the wind and so there was stuff like that going on at Rio where
00:29:02
yeah you don't think of that as like the Olympic sort of standard you had like
00:29:07
big signs like windmilling over the Olympics like it was it was pretty funny but um
00:29:13
but yeah the atmosphere there was really cool and do you see anyone of um anyone
00:29:19
of note are you saying bolt or I mean do you get photos with anyone was it are you too cool to do that no it wasn't too
00:29:27
cool I just felt sorry for them like yeah yeah yeah saw Usain Bolt um one thing that actually really surprised me
00:29:33
in Rio was so there's like Usain Bolt who's he's just the Godfather of Olympics right
00:29:39
he's like Super Famous but then actually the the ones who had the most attention with the
00:29:45
tennis players behind that so uh Andy Murray was in the Olympic Village Djokovic was there uh I remember sitting
00:29:52
at the same table as the William sisters and they just couldn't eat lunch like
00:29:54
wow eventually they they actually just like tossed their lunch and left because they were just there was just a crowd
00:30:01
wanting selfies every every 20 seconds I felt really sorry for them like everyone's been doing a job ultimately
00:30:06
right yeah and you think if there's one place that as an athlete you can sort of
00:30:09
relax and like be amongst your peers and just be there it would be the Olympics but I guess because sports are so
00:30:16
segregated most of the time people don't see the other you know famous athletes from different codes
00:30:22
that often so it still is a big deal but but yeah it was like it's it's a it's an outrageously special
00:30:32
environment particularly in the New Zealand's team because there's all of
00:30:38
the all of the culture and the Mana that they bring with them and all the hackers
00:30:42
to to be welcomed to the building and and you know like you you select a greenstone medallion when you arrive and
00:30:50
it's all cut from one piece of rock it's like we're all part of the same team and
00:30:54
that sort of stuff which on tour you you're most often playing for yourself you have your country name
00:30:59
next to you but it's like it's pretty individual so to go from such an individual world into something that
00:31:05
felt so team oriented that like it gives me goosebumps man it's it's so cool
00:31:10
that's really cool and I mean you've been to two uh Olympics and you've got a
00:31:13
medal to um show for it most people wouldn't end up with a middle so I suppose just being
00:31:18
there and soaking it up and getting that greenstone Medallion that's uh yeah
00:31:21
that's what it's all about yeah or already that special and in Rio Mike and
00:31:26
I actually we had match points in the first round and lost um to a team that I think ended up
00:31:31
playing for bronze and we were gutted and it was always it was spoken like we spoke to each other about it pretty soon
00:31:40
after like we have to come back and we have to do better so even in Tokyo just getting the first round win
00:31:46
even that was just like a huge weight off my shoulders like okay you know now have had some success at the Olympics
00:31:52
and and won't walk away from the whole Olympic experience having had match points and lost
00:31:57
um and then you know coming away with some some iron around the neck like that yeah it's
00:32:06
it was emotional stuff yeah how good how good so yeah so that was a bronze at the
00:32:11
um the 2020 2021 games they were held on though um what an experience I mean it's where is that now
00:32:21
it's uh they're not being a bloody drawer it's not in a drawer there's maybe the equivalent of a draw
00:32:27
it's it's I have a little bag that has sort of you know the memorabilia from
00:32:31
that games you know like a sort of Japanese fan with the New Zealand team logo on it
00:32:37
and it's one of the cool um bits of culture at the Olympics is you sort of exchange little pins with
00:32:45
with other nations and other athletes and so you're all the pins from the different nations
00:32:49
and yeah I'm thinking I haven't got around to it yet but it would be a pretty cool thing to get framed at some
00:32:55
stage oh 100 so you're hoping to go to the next ones right in Paris I'm hoping
00:33:00
is that the plan yeah and will that still be um playing doubles with Michael Venus yeah that's
00:33:06
the only option yeah I'd have uh I've never been at a singles ranking where
00:33:10
I'd qualify for the Olympics and why can't you um so this might be a really
00:33:14
dumb question but I don't know I'm guessing there's a lot of people listening that won't know either
00:33:19
um why are you so much better at doubles than singles tennis is tennis right yes and no so I think the best singles
00:33:27
players in the world if they turned their focus to doubles would be very very good doubles players but the skill
00:33:32
set is a little bit different so I like to think that if I'd been born 30 years earlier I would have been a really
00:33:40
good singles player because my my natural Talent is more with volleys and and sort of feel around the net and and
00:33:47
being sort of at the front of the court but with the way Technology's changed
00:33:52
over the last few decades the game has slowed down a huge amount serving as less meaningful
00:33:57
um and yeah netplay has has become less attacking like because the courts are slower it's harder to put the ball away
00:34:05
and people on the Baseline have more of a chance to pass you so these days that sort of skill set is
00:34:12
much more suited to doubles where you know you hit a lot more volleys the serve has more of an impact
00:34:18
um and I guess like to be quite Frank uh the level at the top of the singles game
00:34:23
like it's harder to make top 50 in singles than it is to make top 50 on doubles I think there's there's more
00:34:28
depth there are more people who dream of being top singles players and top doubles players although even over the
00:34:34
last sort of 10 years that's actually shifting like doubles is getting a lot
00:34:38
harder as we go yeah and so you and Michael Venus how did that partnership start
00:34:43
uh did you guys know each other growing up going through yeah yeah yeah yeah he um did you hate each other initially was
00:34:49
he like your fiercest rival no so he's I think um maybe almost two years older than me
00:34:55
so he he was more my brother I think he was young for my brother's age group and
00:35:01
I don't think he'll mind me saying this he was known as the Loose Cannon of that
00:35:04
age group he was he was Psycho when he was younger like cheers over the fence like matches
00:35:12
like like Nick kyrgios but but there was no sulkiness to it it was more just like rage
00:35:24
and he's found ways over time to sort of Channel it but uh it's still sometimes
00:35:30
there like I remember Mike's got unbelievable energy um I remember playing at Davis so we we
00:35:37
first uh started playing together at Davis Cup like when we come together to represent the country
00:35:42
I remember playing against the Philippines in Cebu this island in the Philippines
00:35:48
it was the final match of the tire two it was two matches all so it was a deciding match and the winner of this
00:35:55
tie would get promoted to a higher group and it was like three o'clock in the
00:36:00
morning so it'd been a long day and there is there are two kiwi fans in the crowd of probably like 2 000 around this
00:36:08
court and the Filipino crowd were being intense that night as well and he goes two sets to love down
00:36:17
starts coming back it's the muggiest conditions I've ever come across so like you know you're
00:36:23
changing shirts every sort of two or three games and he wins the fourth set so sends it to a decider
00:36:30
and I don't know where he got this energy from but he just started jumping up and down like a kangaroo and he did
00:36:36
it the whole fifth set for like an hour he did he didn't sit down at the change
00:36:40
of ends he just kept jumping and I don't know where it came from but he like saw
00:36:43
his opponent was flagging and just channeled all of his like inner rage energy into jumping like a kangaroo won
00:36:50
the fifth set sixth level something like that and was just an absolute hero that
00:36:53
night so yeah that's he's found a way to channel whatever energy he has inside
00:37:00
him into into positive energy these days so good for him I suppose a relationship
00:37:04
like that especially like a long-standing one it comes with its own sort of um you know Dynamics and nuances
00:37:09
and stuff like do you do if things are getting getting you know touchy with with each other do you know to give each
00:37:14
other a bit of space or like how do you manage are you quite good at communicating if if there's something
00:37:19
bothering you or something bothering him you know what that I think this was actually one of the keys to us doing
00:37:24
well in Tokyo was we actually we sat down when we first got to Tokyo and said how are we going to make this
00:37:33
campaign a success and we actually met with Jason McKenzie one of the New Zealand Sports psychologists there and
00:37:41
said hey look like we're really serious about doing well here um we want to know each other better we
00:37:48
want to know how to communicate how to help each other in pressure moments and we had quite a few conversations during
00:37:53
during the sort of 10 days two weeks before we started playing in Tokyo and it was that was amazing and then the
00:38:02
other thing that happened um we got absolutely pounded in the semi-finals at the Olympics uh we lost
00:38:09
six two six two against the creation team that they were on fire but we we didn't even
00:38:15
get a foot in the door like we didn't we didn't put up a fight in that match and
00:38:18
it felt terrible and we went straight from that match to the practice court and we're out there for I don't know two
00:38:27
hours two and a half hours just like talking things through talking through what would happen if the same situation
00:38:33
came up the next day playing for bronze and it's that sort of communication and
00:38:37
that sort of like vulnerability and openness to like what was going through your own head and like
00:38:45
if you're open with that then maybe your partner can help you you know like even admitting like hey I'm a bit
00:38:51
nervous you don't want to do that like you want to pretend that now you're
00:38:55
ready like you're ready to go yeah but if you admit it then your partner's got
00:39:00
a chance to talk you through it and and you know maybe you get a better outcome out the back so
00:39:05
the the way that Mike and I communicated during Tokyo um it was really cool just even if the
00:39:11
result didn't come out of it it was I think a good way to go about it but then
00:39:14
I actually really do think it helped results-wise yeah so you you never you never blame each other or if if you do
00:39:21
do you keep it to yourself like if you know if you're if you're having the game
00:39:23
of your life in the Heat and he's making some unforced errors or whatever you you
00:39:27
know you just keep that to yourself for yeah blame blame is toxic like if you're having a crappy match you know
00:39:35
like on court if everyone knows there's no way to hide yeah there's nowhere to
00:39:40
hide and most of the time you know with because Mike and I are both pretty open like
00:39:47
we'll acknowledge it on court be like you know be apologizing if we make a bad
00:39:50
mistake or that sort of thing and then it's the partner's job to say mate no
00:39:54
apologies uh we're here to win let's just do the best of what we've got today
00:39:57
and there are ways you can sort of push yourself through that and it's all just
00:40:01
part of the process of being professional I think actually what professionals do better than or you know
00:40:06
like as you go up the ranks what what athletes do better is acknowledging that something's off and
00:40:15
as quickly as possible figuring out the process of either minimizing the damage from that or working through it so
00:40:21
that's not a weakness anymore and actually I think that's that's the thing
00:40:25
that I have the most admiration for with you know the legends of the game is man
00:40:29
they figure things out so quickly if if something's off and that's why it seems
00:40:34
like they hardly ever have a bad day when you talk about the legends of the game who do you mean like Rafa Fedora
00:40:39
Rafa Roger Novak yeah yeah even yeah Andy Murray I'd put in that cam have you
00:40:45
ever played any of those guys yeah uh yeah I played I played djokovico at Queens a number of years
00:40:54
ago I've never played against Mario ruffa trained with Andy and warmed up Federer one time and I I sat
00:41:05
on the there's a thing called the ATP player Council um I sat on the council with Rafa Roger
00:41:10
and Andy for a couple of years so sort of got you know got to see inside their head and and get to know them a little
00:41:15
bit which was really cool but um yeah they they don't often play doubles so yeah what's how did you get
00:41:22
on against Novak we won yeah really yeah amazing yeah it must be satisfying it was we should we should have won more
00:41:30
easily as well I think we both got a little bit tight because we're about to
00:41:33
be you know one of the best players ever but um one of the most crowded doubles matches I've played as well
00:41:39
um yeah for those something like Novak like when when someone beats them and he must just get a little bit of Joy seeing
00:41:46
the excitement on their face like holy [ __ ] nah man he's a competitor he's a
00:41:50
competitor through and through yeah he was not happy Stan had just lost a big three-setter in
00:41:57
singles and his I think his brain was wavering a bit but you know I'll take it oh 100 any day and
00:42:06
so um this might be another dumb question but so so say say you're a singles ranked player of I don't know
00:42:12
like 500. what's the difference between say 500 from the world and and best in
00:42:16
the world or top 10 in the world like uh can you still like when the occasional set off those guys like as I suppose
00:42:22
what I'm asking is is the difference incremental and how you play on the day
00:42:26
or is it just as Worlds Apart it's not Worlds Apart at all so I'd say so I'd say there's a difference
00:42:34
between the difference between 500 and say 50 is Tiny most people in that range would hit the
00:42:42
ball about the same pace and spin and everything as you get closer to 50 there'll be a
00:42:48
bit more consistency in terms of placement uh but most of that is mental rather than technical
00:42:55
and then when you go from 50 up to sort of 10 then it I think there's a big mental leap there as well and when I say
00:43:02
mental it's not just uh you know how tough you are in pressure moments it's
00:43:06
like self-belief it's like do you feel like you belong at that level I mean one
00:43:11
thing I struggled with at every level going up was you know [ __ ] I'm from a
00:43:14
farm in New Zealand what what am I doing at this tournament almost like an imposter syndrome in a way absolutely
00:43:19
yeah and and actually that comes back to tall poppy syndrome like you know watch
00:43:24
this little kid from what it up are doing it on this stage um and that's hard to get through and I
00:43:29
think most people to some degree have that so they have to work through that at each level and the people who raise
00:43:35
young I think they've got like that switch turned off in their brain I mean you
00:43:40
know off the top of my head guys like kyrgios zverev Bernard Tomac even like they're just Fearless like and there's
00:43:47
there's arrogance there but it's like it's almost natural arrogance it's like
00:43:51
they they don't have to force it they're just like yeah of course I'm going to
00:43:54
beat Roger at Wimbledon when I'm 16 because why wouldn't I I'm curious you
00:43:58
know um but then when you go from like 50 to 10 there's there's to be top 10
00:44:07
you're a freak like you're not just a freak physically and by that I mean not only are you
00:44:15
outrageously physical and talented but you're also very very robust like the
00:44:21
stresses that you put on your body and in the top ten of singles is absolutely nuts yeah but then the consistency that
00:44:27
you have to have mentally weaken week out day in day out if you're top 10 you've got a huge Target on your back
00:44:32
and everyone who plays against you in the early rounds of a tournament that will be one of the biggest wins of their
00:44:37
life you know you have like it's a stat for every player how many top 10 wins do you have so you're like
00:44:44
their scalp that they want to take so you have to be on your game every single day and that's yeah that's
00:44:51
the the mental fortitude that those guys have it's uh it's it's scary to me well since
00:44:57
speaking of that so you've got a BA in psychology has that sort of helped with
00:45:00
your tennis game like I wish I could say yes nothing in like in terms of like reading
00:45:07
opponents or maybe it's just helped me realize how messed up I am myself yeah
00:45:15
because at least part of it it's got a curiosity about um psychology I'd love
00:45:18
to do papers but yeah the same reason I'll be like no I I don't know if I want
00:45:22
to lift a little lid and look into myself that much yeah I think like honestly I think uh the
00:45:31
being in the sport and thinking about it and talking with a coach about it you learn far more about
00:45:38
your particular area of psychology like sports psychology test psychology then I'd ever learn in a ba
00:45:45
um and I think I think you know different things work for different people so it's more of a
00:45:53
figure out what works for me and that's a trial and error process rather than
00:45:57
do a few papers and it's like okay I can apply all this Theory to myself it's
00:46:01
yeah I think it's a little bit messier than that yeah um have you ever read um agassi's book
00:46:06
open yeah one of the one of the greatest sports books of all time unbelievable and so good yeah what's um
00:46:14
so yeah in that in that book he was going to say it's a love hate relationship with tennis but it's almost
00:46:19
a hate relationship like his dad made him play at a young age and he sort of loathes the sport has your love for the
00:46:26
sport wave but over the years or is it just just love for tennis no it's definitely wavered yeah I would
00:46:33
say I I hesitate to believe the hate like yeah he's still involved yeah he he hasn't
00:46:41
needed to be involved in tennis for decades but he's still part of it he's still part of the scene and stuff
00:46:48
so you know I understand the hate part like it's it it smashes you but uh man it's given him
00:46:56
so much and for me definitely like there are a couple of times that I came really
00:47:00
close to quitting um you know we were speaking earlier you lose you you fail in tennis pretty
00:47:08
much every week like unless you're winning a tournament it means you've lost and
00:47:13
I've won five ATP titles in my career and I think I played at the top level so far for I don't know seven or eight
00:47:21
years so that's less than one sort of top level title per year and that means
00:47:27
that I've had years where I've failed every single week maybe I've won a
00:47:30
challenge a title but you know that as you go up the rankings that means a little less so dealing with that and you
00:47:38
know dealing with the sort of all of those emotions of like I'm not good enough what's wrong with me all
00:47:43
that sort of stuff I guess it's it's incredibly difficult and I also think it's the most valuable
00:47:51
lesson tennis can teach you because if you can deal with that stuff like I just feel like it arms you pretty well for
00:47:57
whatever comes to life yeah how do you deal with that it's it's hard it's hard to think in
00:48:05
outside of cliches with this stuff like you know there are always learning opportunities and failure and there are
00:48:11
usually more learning opportunities when you fail than when you succeed and I think that's so true yeah it's like it's
00:48:17
sort of a it's like a enough of a shock that it forces you to examine it and I think
00:48:25
some people some people work best with being like okay I had a bad day move on but I've always been of the type that's
00:48:31
like what did I do wrong why did I do it wrong and and how could I improve it um and that's you know you Wade through
00:48:38
the mud um especially if you play a bad game like you you know it takes some time to
00:48:44
sort of process yeah and deal with the fact that you you didn't live up to your
00:48:47
own expectations um but that's yeah I think that's actually that's part of the beauty of sport is
00:48:56
you know I actually the guy that that I run home-backed athletes with Hugo Engels this this is one of his phrases
00:49:04
but it's like you know sport takes you from the ones to the tens just like sort
00:49:10
of week to week and I think there aren't that many other areas of life where you
00:49:15
experience those extremes of high and low emotion so frequently and it's hard but there's also it's pretty
00:49:24
cool you know like experiencing the tens is amazing but also experiencing the ones that you need
00:49:30
that for contrast and and it's kind of like life really isn't it yeah yeah like
00:49:34
you need the lows to appreciate the highs of course yeah yeah it's like life
00:49:39
there's highest lows and then just a whole lot of nothingness a whole lot of airports
00:49:46
um yeah how's your I mean like mentally it's got a physically it's a tough game
00:49:49
like uh that's one takeaway from the Agassi book open it's like he's in agony
00:49:54
um back issues all sorts but mentally tough game as well do you have you seen the the Maori fish do you know Marty
00:50:02
fish or you've seen the documentary on Netflix I've seen the documentary I
00:50:05
don't know him personally so um the 2012 US Open he had anxiety and pulled out of
00:50:09
his um fourth round match with Roger Federer like uh like Forfeit of the game like just before he was about to go on
00:50:14
because he was having a having a panic attack how's how's your um like mental
00:50:18
state been over the years yeah I think I think I've been really lucky honestly
00:50:25
um you know I talk about this with my wife quite a lot uh yeah I think partly I think I've been lucky
00:50:35
genetically I think uh yeah this is an interesting interesting one because I think I'm lucky
00:50:42
genetically because I feel like despite experiencing lows and I think I've probably had a few patches of depression
00:50:48
in my life I never feel helpless I always feel like this is a low patch I'm really
00:50:55
struggling but I don't think it's going to last yeah type thing it's a circumstantial
00:51:01
depression like you've got a reason to be depressed or yeah yeah yeah it's
00:51:05
usually like injury you know I've had far too long with injury yeah um even you know
00:51:12
yeah the the last week actually of a um I was struggling about you know I had a second surgery on my knee and and
00:51:20
actually feel like the surgery went really well but you know I haven't been able to really be active and I find a
00:51:25
lot of joy in being active in my day-to-day life and and then I was sort of sort of getting to a stage where I
00:51:31
felt like I could start being more active day to day and then I had to get this this little benign growth thing cut
00:51:37
out of my back so it's like another week where I got stitches in my back and and
00:51:41
can't you know not really allowed to sweat and it's just really struggling
00:51:45
like you know like this Joy Giver of being able to be out and about and get sunshine and and you know get the
00:51:51
endorphins flowing so yeah I like I do think I've experienced depression but
00:51:59
I think I'm probably luckier than most in that uh whether it's through nature or nurture
00:52:07
I feel like I have a bit of perspective on it when it happens um early covert was another situation A
00:52:12
oh where were you were you in New Zealand were you I was here when it all kicked off but my wife so we were
00:52:18
actually based in New York at the time and she was working for a law firm now and I was here playing Davis Cup
00:52:26
and New Zealand was going to shut down and it was like okay what do we do like we're in different countries that's
00:52:31
right he was a mad rush home it's like everything yeah hard to get flights even
00:52:35
yeah and I was thinking well [ __ ] if I if I don't leave New Zealand now maybe I
00:52:41
won't be able to and win one XE may actually she was she was my girlfriend at the time
00:52:47
um and so I chose to go over there and so I flew over but didn't really have
00:52:53
anything to do um you know the tour stopped she was working ridiculous hours for that law
00:52:59
firm like you know sort of 16 17 hours a day so didn't really see her that much
00:53:03
um and it was winter in in Northern Connecticut and went through a really dark patch of uh
00:53:09
just sort of purposelessness and and um yeah waking up and being like another grade day like what am I doing
00:53:18
with my life and But ultimately you know another like that was probably the longest patch of depression I feel like
00:53:23
I've had but ultimately ultimately it led to a lot of self-reflection and and
00:53:27
then led to high impact athletes like okay well how do I want to act in the world how do I want to live in the world
00:53:31
and and that was sort of what led to the conception of hia so I mean yeah really long-winded answer
00:53:37
but I I've definitely been through low patches but I think firstly with I think a little bit of
00:53:42
luck genetically and secondly with you know having having the resources with a coach that I could speak to when I'm
00:53:47
feeling really down uh more recently to to have access to some of the sport New Zealand Sikes and and being able to have
00:53:54
those sorts of chats like I feel really lucky with with you with how being able to deal
00:53:58
with with those sorts of things yeah you're quite good at talking about things
00:54:02
you're quite good at being open and vulnerable I think so the the thing that the thing
00:54:07
that I wonder is even now I'm wondering you know saying like I think I'm lucky
00:54:13
I wonder if that's a little bit of the Kiwi play it down like you know like cover it up sort of stuff and whether if
00:54:22
if somehow this show was lifted off that maybe there'd be more there that I just
00:54:27
haven't allowed myself to access like it's one one thing that actually I kept myself for a long time
00:54:33
um when I was in Slovakia I got pretty badly beaten up by by a few guys uh I was on a night out with it with a group
00:54:40
of friends and just went outside for a bit of fresh air and got like bottled from behind and
00:54:45
um so yes like 17 18. I think I was yeah maybe like just before I turned 18 around round 18. and got beaten up badly
00:54:54
like you know bottle from behind kicked on the ground tried to like manage to get up tried to swing my way out of it
00:55:00
but they they got me down again basically kicked me unconscious and I I was lucky like you know stitches
00:55:09
stitches in the back of my head like a under my eye and stuff um and outside of that you know like didn't
00:55:17
have any like permanent injuries but I I never sort of acknowledged it really uh I'm I managed to convince so you know
00:55:30
I had to get some brain scans and stuff because I was pretty shaken up uh and it
00:55:34
cost quite a lot I managed to convince the insurance company because I was under my parents health insurance
00:55:39
medical insurance or whatever it was managed to convince them to say to my parents that I'd fallen down the stairs
00:55:45
and like tripped over a dog um why because you didn't want them to worry because I didn't want them to
00:55:49
worry and I just you know like I was on this path of like trying to be a tennis player and I thought my mum would say
00:55:54
well that's it you know you're coming home this is two dangerous type stuff
00:55:57
and and so just like took me a couple of weeks to recover before I could start training again but just sort of okay
00:56:03
that happened I'm not gonna go to that place again and sort of lay low uh and then I just carried on and that
00:56:11
sort of stuff talking about with my La my wife like you know over a decade later
00:56:16
who has a lot of experience with therapy and and really believes in it and in its
00:56:21
power to to help people and you know it sort of gets me thinking well what have I buried what have I just
00:56:27
sort of said okay well that's that's done I've dealt with it I'm gonna move
00:56:31
on but you know what's what's covered up and yeah I just I just don't know I don't
00:56:36
know if I'm if I've actually been able to deal with those things because I feel like I have
00:56:41
but um who knows yeah well the fact that you can talk about it so openly I think
00:56:46
that's uh I mean it says you haven't like buried at all necessarily compartmentalize it I know I think
00:56:52
that's a good thing where you you say your wife's running to therapy is that
00:56:55
um just the Americans that are psyche I think partly yeah um you know like she's her family I think
00:57:03
we're we're on the other end of the Spectrum in terms of bad luck in terms
00:57:07
of um you know like generational family history of addiction and and that sort of stuff and uh
00:57:14
I know she's she's struggled with with bouts of depression in her life and
00:57:18
anxiety and um has done a huge amount of work personally uh you know she's she's
00:57:26
been doing yoga at a very deep level and by that I mean you know like beyond the physical
00:57:32
movement you know going deep into the the spirituality and the sort of that side of it for probably about 15 years
00:57:38
now and as a meditation teacher and you know meditates every day and and is constantly doing work on trying to keep
00:57:46
herself level and and that sort of stuff and it's it's it's pretty cool to see like you
00:57:53
know she's she's using the tools that she feels best to to better her own life and um
00:57:59
and therapy is just another one of those tools for her it's cool because I don't
00:58:03
think there's a like a one-size-fits all layer I think but I think you need to
00:58:05
work out what's right for you in terms of you know your mental health and your
00:58:08
happiness and your resilience and take it from there are you do you think you're a naturally resilient person or
00:58:13
do you think you've built resilience over the years with um tennis and everything else
00:58:18
I'd say it's a bit of both yeah I think you know both my parents come from
00:58:22
generations of farmers and I think there's maybe it's a generalization there but I
00:58:27
think there's a natural resilience there or just like a get on with it and that
00:58:31
sort of thing which could be good or bad yeah um but yeah I mean you have to learn
00:58:38
resilience in tennis the whole failure thing if you can't if you can't learn to
00:58:43
deal with bad times then you can't be a tennis player and I'm actually one thing
00:58:48
I'm interested in so I've I've listened to a few of your podcasts and you you
00:58:52
talk about your own therapy is this something that you do you have a regular a regular practice with therapy or is it
00:59:01
something that you turn to when you feel like you need it yeah I haven't been in
00:59:04
a couple of years um but I'm actually finding this podcast and these conversations kind of like
00:59:09
therapy in a way but I am I put off going for I never went until I was like mid 40s and um I don't know why but I
00:59:16
was [ __ ] scared of going I was like I suppose you know part of its fear of what they're going to find part of it is
00:59:23
like sitting with a stranger and being like completely open and honest and vulnerable it's it's uh you don't know
00:59:29
where to start and I went in for that first session because I was like I need to sort my [ __ ] [ __ ] out so I went in
00:59:34
and sat down and then you you know you I left an hour later and it was like a personal trainer for your head and it
00:59:40
makes perfect sense like they're trained and they're going to make it easy yeah
00:59:43
so it's not like I had to sit there and go right back to the very beginning of
00:59:46
my life yeah so I I found it I I was actually mad with myself and embarrassed actually when I left that first session
00:59:52
because it's something that I needed and I've put off for years and years and
00:59:56
years and it was just dumb yeah dumb um but it's really good I'd recommend it
01:00:00
to anyone it's just a shame that there's a lot of people that could really do
01:00:03
with it but it's um yeah the cost is prohibited yeah and I think there's
01:00:06
still in the states there's zero stigma attached to it now you know like it would be normal in a conversation even
01:00:13
with relative strangers to be like oh my therapist said XYZ and I think in New Zealand that would still perk people's
01:00:21
ears up rather than just being sort of part of the normal discourse you know like
01:00:25
mentioning casually that you go to therapy isn't yet as normal here as it is there
01:00:31
um but one thing it still probably has a certain amount of stigma attached to it
01:00:34
in a way I guess I one one thing my wife has always said uh I'm not sure if I
01:00:40
agree with that and I'm interested in your takeers so she she has regular sessions with her therapist and she
01:00:46
finds that the regularity is incredibly helpful because it's almost in the sort of
01:00:54
the moments where you don't think that you have something that you need to deal
01:00:57
with that it will pop up and and she said she's actually made most of her biggest breakthroughs not when she's in
01:01:04
crisis but when she's just in a regular session yeah and that's seems sort of
01:01:08
counter-intuitive to me like I've turned to sports sucks into the resources that
01:01:12
I have if I'm feeling really bad and it's like okay I feel really bad I need
01:01:15
to fix this but then there's this whole other way of thinking of like no this is
01:01:19
yeah like going and seeing a personal trainer everywhere that makes a lot of sense like an ambulance at the top of
01:01:24
the club versus the bottom yeah I think yeah I think there's a there's a lot in
01:01:28
that but again yeah how did you guys meet she's super smart right like Harvard
01:01:37
trained she's annoyingly smart yeah um yeah I don't think you're only you're
01:01:42
a slouch either I still managed by comparison I managed to beat her at word games which really
01:01:47
frustrates her it's the best thing well I like Wordle yeah like like word or um
01:01:53
Scrabble or whatever she hates it um but we we met actually um we got match made by a friend that I
01:02:01
grew up with and wanted upper was doing a law Masters at Columbia and I got to New York a few days before
01:02:10
my Airbnb started for the US Open and you know I like always scratching to make ends meet so rather than pay for a
01:02:18
hotel for a few nights I sort of thought who do I know in in New York that I could maybe crash on the couch for a few
01:02:24
nights and I got in touch with her and uh turned out she was house sitting this beautiful like four bedroom house in
01:02:30
Brooklyn for a while so yeah the the people who owned it said it was fine for me to stay and so we were just hanging
01:02:36
out and she got it in her head that um that she needed to introduce me to one of her friends while I was in New York
01:02:41
so it was just like scrolling through a phone and giving giving grades to to her
01:02:46
available friends and she got to what have you been giving grades like b-plus that's the like in terms of what like
01:02:54
physicality or a whole package I guess a whole holistic package um but she she got to Cairo and it's just
01:03:03
refreshing that uh that a female is doing that yeah I know right like I was actually quite surprised myself she got
01:03:08
she got to care she said uh Kara is an A plus plus but I think she's got a boyfriend so but she said you guys
01:03:15
should meet anyway because you just have awesome conversations I was like okay cool yeah whatever I'm I'm down to meet
01:03:19
people who I'd have a good chat with and in between that and actually meeting up
01:03:25
with Caro found out she didn't have a boyfriend anymore I think you know it's
01:03:28
like a few weeks out of a relationship with something but anyway it was still we're still thinking like this is just
01:03:33
someone I'm gonna have a chat with it's not it's not a date or anything like
01:03:36
that so we met up for coffee and a walk on the Hudson and and um just ended up chatting for like three
01:03:44
hours and didn't want it to stop we both I had training and she was um so she she
01:03:51
was doing a a law degree at Columbia at the time that's how they knew each other
01:03:55
and we both had to split but we didn't want the conversation to end so actually
01:04:00
organized to meet again that night and that was that that evening sort of felt like a date and wow yeah it's not nice
01:04:07
those occasions in life and it's um it's very rare but when when you meet someone
01:04:11
and it's almost like time stands still low it's remarkable like you can go on a
01:04:15
date with someone it could be awkward and there's just nothing there and it's
01:04:18
evident very early on or then there's the opposite which is like what you guys
01:04:21
had yeah and it's for me it's the the coolest thing about my marriage is I know that in 50 years
01:04:32
we're still going to have interesting conversations and that I just love that idea like she she
01:04:39
spends so much time growing as a person and pushing herself in different directions and you know like being
01:04:46
curious and trying to open a mind in different ways and that's always been sort of the way that I try to approach
01:04:52
life as well that you know we're obviously we're both going to change and
01:04:55
grow a lot over the years but I just always think that we're going to be able
01:04:58
to to push and pull each other in ways that will be challenging and and I get excited about that it's
01:05:04
it's cool to think that you know like I don't think boredom is ever going to be
01:05:07
part of the equation oh that's really sweet that's really nice where do you
01:05:10
think you'll um end up remaining New Zealand that's a tricky question yeah um you don't have any kids here hey
01:05:17
we don't we have a dog which my wife she treats the dog like that like I'm
01:05:23
worried how much she's gonna spoil kids it's outrageous I'm a dog guy as well
01:05:29
and I think um kids end up doing things that annoy you right dogs are just perfect right right yeah
01:05:35
they you know even the annoying stuff they do is tolerable but kids end up becoming annoying okay so yeah I can I
01:05:41
can see that I mean although you know like the dog recently has done a thing where he started pulling her undies out
01:05:47
of the out of the laundry and and chewing through them but she doesn't find it annoying she's like oh that's
01:05:52
sweet you know just just who's not yours a little bit a little bit messed about
01:05:58
it to be honest but um oh yeah no no kids we we are you know we're hoping to have kids at some point
01:06:06
and the the thing is like I I've I love New Zealand and I've wanted to I've desperately wanted to
01:06:15
live here for the last 15 years that I've been overseas like I've you know I miss this place yeah when I'm
01:06:20
away um and so having you know sort of been forced to be based here over the last
01:06:25
year and a half because of injury but man it's been so cool in so many ways just even even just being able to be
01:06:30
grounded a little bit and not have to travel every week yeah um yeah so you you messaged me um last
01:06:37
week about doing this podcast and I said oh come around come around the following
01:06:40
Monday which is today um you said on your first email that um I think I'm going to be in the states
01:06:45
yeah yeah so we're we're heading away Friday right so this is like this is the challenge I think is so
01:06:52
she's really close to her family um really close to her mother and they live on the east coast of the states and
01:06:58
that's a long way away um so uh heading over there for about a month and you know like the other thing is
01:07:07
I like how small New Zealand is and and I've never needed big cities like I sort
01:07:11
of run in the opposite direction from from big cities you live in Raglan now yeah and it's perfect yeah you know like
01:07:16
it's feels like a great balance to me of enough going on that I don't feel like
01:07:21
I'm missing out on anything but um quiet enough that you know I don't feel sort of cramped and New York was
01:07:27
the opposite I really struggled there um I regardless of who you are you feel invisible in New York don't you and that
01:07:34
can be nice but yeah yeah and it's so life on tour is so hectic that when I come back from being on tour I want to
01:07:42
be able to relax and it's for me it was impossible to relax in New York but yeah so I'd like
01:07:48
for her having you know a law degree from from one of the top universities in the world like it's it's quite limited
01:07:54
what she can do with that in New Zealand compared to the states what do you mean
01:07:58
you think um it would open any doors you wanted to yeah it's just like so so at the moment
01:08:03
she's working on a lot of um for example like false advertising law uh legal challenges to some of the
01:08:10
biggest corporations in the world so she works for for a firm that's based on the
01:08:15
East Coast um but she can't for example go to the hearings and you know one of the cases
01:08:21
might be argued in the Supreme Court uh in the future and uh she can't go and
01:08:26
attend that which if you're a lawyer that's probably you know like the Olympics of of law election if she's
01:08:33
based in New Zealand she can't pursue those sorts of career opportunities right and
01:08:38
in a sense you know I've I've had the luxury of being able to pursue like with all of my being a
01:08:47
career in tennis for a long time and she hasn't been doing it for that long like
01:08:51
she she spent so long studying and loved it but you know she's she's only really been
01:08:57
working for sort of three or four years and is sort of still in the stepping up process so I suppose I suppose yeah for
01:09:03
what you do at 33 it's like definitely into the second half or to even tail end
01:09:07
of your career but for a law thing I suppose she's just ramping up yeah yeah
01:09:12
and started picking in her 50s potentially yeah so it's like how how can is there a way that we can have our cake
01:09:19
and eat it too where she has the opportunity for her career and we have the lifestyle that that we want to have
01:09:26
it's like it's a tricky yeah tricky situation and and post tennis for you
01:09:29
what's the what's the plan um stay at home Dad and just um hia Dash that doesn't sound bad
01:09:37
um sounds idalic yeah yeah I mean yeah I the cool thing the cool thing about being injured is I've thrown
01:09:46
myself at home-backed athletes for the last year and a half and I've really enjoyed it like it I feel like it's
01:09:51
grown a lot since then and it is something that I get pumped to wake up and work on
01:09:57
and I think a lot of athletes actually really struggle with with what happens after sport you know that
01:10:02
it is a big void you you spend all of your waking hours thinking about your sport or at least
01:10:10
that's that was the case for me and it was you know even if you're not at the
01:10:13
tennis courts or in the gym everything that you do outside of it is geared towards it like what am I going to eat
01:10:19
tonight how is that going to help me train better tomorrow you know what time am I going to go to sleep am I gonna am
01:10:24
I gonna walk and explore this city or is that going to be too tiring for my legs
01:10:29
so I can't train as well you know like everything you do is get around sport so
01:10:33
when you give it up there's this big void and you have to feel it somehow and
01:10:35
I feel really lucky that hia is like feels like it feels that that void pretty well
01:10:42
um But ultimately I want ultimately I think every charity or every non-profit's goal
01:10:48
should be to not have to exist right like ultimately I want to try and solve the problem of of athletes just deciding
01:10:56
that part of being an athlete is giving back in a really effective and significant way and and if we do that
01:11:02
you know if we can make it a norm in the athlete space then we we don't need to
01:11:06
exist anymore and that's that's the ideal and then after that who knows yeah
01:11:11
and um how's the body now are you on the mint you're on the way back yeah I am on
01:11:16
the mend yeah um yeah I so I had my first jog yesterday uh after the second knee surgery and you
01:11:24
know it was like one minute jog four minute walk so very very light but basically pain-free and I've got a great
01:11:31
team I'm training out of Cambridge at the velodrome there um I have a great team that I'm working with there
01:11:37
um So the plan is the plan is get healthy get strong slowly return to tennis because you know
01:11:43
after a year and a half of not hitting balls my wrist is is going to take a long time to sort of
01:11:49
get used to that repetition and get robust again but the idea is to try and start with the ASB classic at the start
01:11:55
of next year awesome and so when was the last time you swung a record has it been a long
01:12:00
time yeah I mean so after the first surgery I tried to come back a few times and I think two or three times had a hit
01:12:07
and it's just it's just in a lot of pain um so over the last year and a half I
01:12:12
probably spent like an hour and a half total on court so the last time I really properly swung the racket was Australian
01:12:17
Open last year is there um a fear that you you know your game won't come back
01:12:22
the way it was or do you think it's like a muscle memory thing or you're entirely
01:12:26
confident that uh it's going to be sweet as I think I'd be lying if I said I'm
01:12:31
entirely confident yeah um yeah it's got it's got to be a bit of anxiety there yeah
01:12:38
I'm entirely confident that I could get back to a level of uh of com of I reckon
01:12:47
I'm 100 confident I could get back to top hundred getting back to top 50 level or like you
01:12:54
know like challenging for the deeper level deeper stages of grand slams that's that's interesting because
01:13:02
that's not just physical that's like your belief your mind has to be really
01:13:06
really sharp and and sort of um you can't have any any chunks in your self-belief there so
01:13:13
again sort of going back to imposter syndrome one thing that I'm gonna have to be very
01:13:19
conscious about dealing with is you know always in the past I worked so hard because I had this thing where I felt I
01:13:25
needed to feel like I deserved results yeah and that for me was well I know that I've put the same amount or more
01:13:32
hours in than the people around me and the reality is over the last year and a half I've put you know I've put a fair
01:13:39
amount of hours into my physical side but nothing it's tennis so it's going to
01:13:43
be figuring that piece out I think yeah well that's terrifying and exciting yeah
01:13:48
an equal measure that's an interesting challenge um but I I feel like you're in a lucky
01:13:52
position where it's like you're not you're not going to be defined by tennis
01:13:57
yeah you know what I mean well I I hope so actually I really hope that I thought
01:14:01
there's way more to you than just the tennis and you know it would be it would be a privilege if
01:14:08
whatever I've done in tennis gets forgotten about uh because it's been overshadowed by high impact athletes or
01:14:14
you know that sort of stuff like I'd consider that a big one yeah yeah wouldn't it be funny of 20 years from
01:14:19
now a fun fact the hia guy anyway with everything thank you so all going well we'll see you back on tennis court
01:14:31
yeah so um I have to be really strategic about uh when I start competing because
01:14:36
there's all this protected ranking sort of admin um ideally I'm on a tennis court
01:14:41
training at Full Steam by sort of October this year and hopefully competing uh first week of next year
01:14:49
oh good oh yeah the um Heineken open yes yeah the Auckland tennis tournament yeah
01:14:54
singles or doubles or both doubles uh yeah it would be impressive if I could if I
01:15:01
could get at age 33 make a second career out of singles yeah um yeah doubles hesitation there
01:15:11
well actually you know why I was thinking on the drive up here I was thinking it might not be a bad idea when I start
01:15:17
training again to train singles because it will be a bit more repetition through
01:15:21
the body it'll be a harder version like a more physical version of tennis through the body so if I can if I can be
01:15:28
robust playing singles then I can probably be robust playing high high level doubles and I think
01:15:37
because I'm not as good at Singles I can probably get a lot of good competition
01:15:41
in New Zealand on the singles Court who knows you know maybe sign up for for ASB classic qualities and and
01:15:49
see what I can do I don't have any expectations there like I've got negative expectations on on the single
01:15:56
score uh watch the space Oh what's what's Michael Venus been doing while
01:15:59
you've been out injured uh he's been cracking on he's playing with uh Jamie
01:16:04
Murray um they won an ATP title yesterday in Geneva uh so the the tournament and the lead up to Roland
01:16:14
garroth so the French Open starts either today or yesterday um I mean he's he's been truly world class
01:16:21
for the last five six years you know um sort of hanging in the top 20 and I've got a I I have to give a huge
01:16:29
amount of credit to Mike because he sort of broke the seal in New Zealand he won the French Open
01:16:36
it's like 2015 or something like that prove to us bunch of kiwi tennis players who are
01:16:43
trying to make it pro that we could and being the first person to do that is the
01:16:48
hardest and then you know the Trailblazer right yeah it helped me it was like okay I know Mike I know Mike's
01:16:54
level he's really good but I don't feel like I'm worse and so like if he can do
01:16:59
it then maybe I can do it and I feel like he's you know that was a gift to to
01:17:03
a lot of other kiwi tennis players does that so yeah sorry I was just wrapping up but I just think about the um the
01:17:08
Dynamics of like a double scenario how does it feel from your perspective when you were out injured and he's
01:17:15
cracking on with another partner I mean so we never we never played uh the tour together we played a few
01:17:22
tournaments here and there but we've never had a long-term partnership but was always when we played for the
01:17:26
country we played together um they're uh yeah I'm gonna be totally transparent here there are some people
01:17:34
that when they win I'm like oh you know like that like that should be me but not
01:17:39
with Mike yeah um yeah with with kiwis I feel like I'm just stoked when they win and I feel I
01:17:46
feel like tennis is underrepresented in New Zealand I mean it's a huge Global
01:17:50
Sport and uh I wish it had a bit more recognition and you know a bit more sort of
01:17:56
a wider community and a bit more sort of uptake in New Zealand so the better kiwis can do I think the the happier I
01:18:03
am that's awesome oh you're a good man um congratulations on everything you've
01:18:08
done and uh I think congratulations too for everything that you're gonna do in
01:18:13
the future oh thank you it's going to be a hell of a life thank you and thanks for having
01:18:17
me on and and for you know providing a platform to talk about this stuff I think the the platform that you provide
01:18:22
is really valuable not just you know for you know people like me who want to talk
01:18:26
about non-profits and charity and that sort of stuff but also the the way that you talk about mental health and and
01:18:31
being open with that side of things I think you know especially men in New Zealand probably have a ways to go with
01:18:36
that stuff and so normalizing it and and sort of bringing it more into the mainstream is really valuable yeah well
01:18:42
thank you uh well I mean I've just been like overwhelmed really by how um open and transparent everyone has
01:18:48
been that's been on the the podcast it's just normalizing these conversations say
01:18:51
rather than just sort of like bearing it in the shadows yeah and I think it's I
01:18:55
think it's a really cool thing like I'm I'm you're 33 I'm 50 now so I was from
01:18:58
born in that and raised in that generation where yeah you guys don't cry uh you know Real Men drink beer all that
01:19:05
sort of stuff so it's it's nice to sort of um like change that narrative a bit
01:19:09
yeah nice oh well done hey Marcus Daniel thank you so much man good luck favorite
01:19:13
thing thanks thank you [Music]