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Published Jun 16, 2020
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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he had been ranked No. 1 in the United States, and as high as No. 6 in the world. He had led his country to a Davis Cup title. He had reached the quarterfinals or better at all four Grand Slam tournaments, and twice made it to the semifinals at the US Open.
Nicknamed The Bull, this wiry, no-nonsense native son of West Texas was one of tennisâ tough guys. On court, despite being just 5â9â, he was a hard- charging serve-and-volleyer; off court, he drank as hard as an athleteâs lifestyle would allow. In a mid-match confrontation that pitted two hot-heads of different generations against each other, Richey even succeeded in getting a young John McEnroe to shut up.
So why, Richey wondered as the â70s progressed and his 30th birthday approached, was he more on edge than ever? Why, on so many nights, did he find himself going well past his old limit of four beers? Why had he suddenly developed the yips on his backhand? Why couldnât he sleep until heâd downed 40 milligrams of Valium? Why, one morning before a match in Atlanta, was he still so high he âcouldnât feel his feet when they hit the carpetâ?
âI didnât know what was wrong,â Richey, now 73, says today from his home in San Angelo, Texas. âMy brain was in a storm for five or six years. I was self-medicating with alcohol and basically a functional depressive, but I didnât have that term.â
Richey thought his malaise was just part of life on tour, where loneliness and jet lag are the norm, your friend one day is your opponent the next, and slumps can crush even the most iron-willed playerâs soul. Few people, and even fewer male professional athletes, talked about depression in those days. And that went double in tennis, a sport with a strong ethos of self-reliance. Among Richeyâs peers, Arthur Ashe was one of the few who expressed concern about his work-hard, play-hard lifestyle.
âI always had bad anxiety, even in the juniors, but I wrote it off,â Richey says. âI didnât know it wasnât normal. In my family, it was nothing but tennis, and Iâd always worried about how good I was compared to others.â
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Richey was a highly accomplished player, but his toughest battle had nothing to do with forehands and backhands. âCliff is my friend and his crusade to draw more attention to depression will not be easy,â wrote Jimmy Connors in Richeyâs first book, Acing Depression: A Tennis Championâs Toughest Match. âBut he has never been afraid of a fight. With his energy and focus, it is a challenge that can be met.â (Getty Images)
For Richey, tennis was a double-edged sword for his anxiety. On the one hand, the sport heightened it; on the other, his nerves served as a motivator.
âI like things that are clear cut, and I liked that in tennis you either won or lost,â he says. âBut thereâs also nowhere to hide. Whatever you did, it was in the newspaper the next day. âThe one thing I could fall back on was my skill. I could always count on that to get me where I wanted to go.â
Until he couldnât. By 1979, Richeyâs skill was no longer enough to keep him on tour. But even as his tennis game was declining, his golf game was improving, and by the early 1990s, he had joined the Celebrity Playerâs golf tour. It didnât take long for the old demons to follow him from the court to the course.
âTwo years into the tour, I was losing my [golf] game, replaying my horror of losing my tennis game,â Richey says.
For a second time, Richeyâs safety netâhis athletic abilityâhad been pulled out from under him. This time depression hit harder. Richey plastered black garbage bags on his windowsââmy mind became dark.â He says he was largely ânon-functionalâ from 1994 to â97. Yet it wasnât until 1996, when he visited his dermatologist, who was also a family friend, that Richey understood what was happening to him, and what he needed to do about it.
âI laid my heart out,â Richey says.
After his dermatologist helped secure him a prescription for an anti-depressant, Richey quit drinking, got therapy, and started taking Zoloft. âIâm happy to be on it,â he says, while reiterating that he isnât âcuredâ of depression. He returned to the golf tour and retired from his second sport in 2007.
âI always knew from tennis that you change a losing game, and it was time for me to change,â Richey says. âOnce I understood what was happening to me, I made depression my ultimate opponent.â
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Rubin won the Wimbledon junior title in 2014, but hasnât reached the second round there as a pro. His rocky transition to the ATP tour began a downward spiral that, eventually, inspired him to create something that helped not only him, but other struggling pros. (Getty Images)
Earlier this decade, Mardy Fish talked openly about his struggles with an anxiety disorder, and Serena Williams has done the same about her postpartum depression. But the stigma around discussing mental health has stubbornly endured.
âYou see it written about more now,â Richey says, âbut it hasnât changed nearly enough.â
Noah Rubin, a 24-year-old player from Long Island, wants to do something about that. Unlike Richey, a baby boomer born in 1946, Rubin, a Millennial born in 1996, is already well-versed in the subjects of anxiety and depression. He has experienced them first-hand, and sought professional help. During his five years on tour, he has also observed the symptoms of them in his fellow players.
âIâm passionate about mental health,â Rubin says. âIâm passionate about knowing my feelings and sharing what I feel.â
In the juniors and college, Rubin met with little but success. When he was a student at John McEnroeâs academy in New York, McEnroe called him âthe most talented player weâve come across.â Rubin won the boysâ title at Wimbledon in 2014, and reached the NCAA Division I final as a freshman.
But as it has been for so many other talented young players, the pro tour was a steeper hill to climb. Despite making improvements to his game, and pushing Roger Federer hard at the 2017 Australian Open, Rubin has never been ranked higher than No. 125. The low point came at a Challenger event in Spain in 2018, when he found himself alone in a dark and near-empty club at 11 at night, having just lost his fifth straight match, âwith tears slowly dripping down my face.â
But Rubin also discovered that he wasnât the only player who felt alone. The life of the rank-and-file pro, and the struggles he or she faces, hadnât changed much since Richeyâs day. The travel was just as arduous, the jet lag just as debilitating, the slumps just as devastating, and the money worries just as vexing.
âYouâre by yourself most of the time, and youâre dealing with failure most of the time,â Rubin says. âYouâre struggling financially. It has a snowball effect.â
According to Rubin, something else hasnât changed since Richeyâs day: alcohol as a survival tool.
âI know a lot of players who, to cope and to get ready for the next week, spend 12 hours drinking,â Rubin told The Daily Telegraph last year.
To Rubin, tennisâ structure only exacerbates these problems. The season is too long, the best-of-five-set matches too grueling, and the chase for money and ranking points too frenzied.
To help shine a brighter light on his fellow playersâ lives, Rubin did what any social-media-savvy Millennial might do: he created an Instagram account. Called Behind the Racquet, itâs a place where pros of all levels can share their stories. In part, Rubin sees the site as a way to advertise the game to a generation of fans who are accustomed to knowing everythingâthe good, the bad, and the uglyâabout their favorite celebrities.
âI feel like thereâs a disconnect between tennis players and fans,â Rubin says. âThe way the sport is promoted, fans canât relate to players at a deeper level.â
Traditionally, tennis players have been leery about broadcasting their vulnerabilities to their fellow pros. âIâm not here to make friendsâ has always been an acceptable, even admirable, philosophy on tour. Rubin calls those concerns âantiquated.â
âIf Iâm in a third set, Iâm not thinking about something my opponent revealed about himself in the past; it doesnât work that way,â Rubin says. âThereâs this toxic masculinity in sports, that you have to be the alpha male, but I donât think thatâs relevant in a match.â
If the response from his fellow players is any indication, Rubin is onto something. Behind the Racquet now features the personal and sometimes painful stories of more than 100 people from across the sport. Women and men, Top 10 players and Challenger players, active pros and retired pros, 40-somethings and teenagers, fans and announcers: Rubin tries to offer a space where everyone can open up.
In April, 16-year-old Coco Gauff caused a stir when she posted that she had been âreally depressedâ in the year leading up to her 2019 breakthrough. (Cocoâs father later clarified her comment, and Rubin believes he made an error in editorial judgement.) If itâs startling to hear a young superstar talk about depression, Rubin hopes his site will make it less so.
âI wanted Behind the Racquet to be a form of therapy,â Rubin says, âto start the conversation and get people to at least think about how theyâre feeling. We need to normalize talking about anxiety.â
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For Behind the Racquet, Roberto Bautista Agut tells the story of how he dealt with the deaths of his parents, and Madison Keys talks about being judged for her weight at 15, by people who saw her on TV. âEventually, that truly got into my head,â she says. (Getty Images)
That revolution came too late to prolong Richeyâs career, but he has seen the benefits since. In 2010, he teamed with his daughter, Hilaire Kallendorf, to write Acing Depression: A Tennis Championâs Toughest Match, a memoir of his peaks and valleys on tour.
âAs you can probably guess, I wasnât the worldâs greatest father when I was a player,â Richey says. âBut doing this book really brought my daughter and I closer.â
Along with personal healing, the book gave Richey an identity far removed from that of most former professional athletes. He became a regular speaker at mental-health conferences, and has helped counsel hundreds of fellow sufferers over the years. In 2017, he published a second book, with Mary Garrison, Your Playbook for Beating Depression.
Like the net-rusher he once was, Richey has fought his demons by understanding his opponent, and going to battle with it.
âSo many people still donât know what the signs are for depression,â Richey says. âI tell them, âKnow what loss is getting to you. Read up on the disease. Address the issue.â
âTennis is a selfish sport. Everythingâs about you. So it means something to me to think that I could help save some people. Iâd like to be known as a pretty darn good tennis player, and a mental health advocate.â
âI love kicking depressionâs ass any chance I can get.â