Inspiring Others

Being at the Tennis Hall of Fame yesterday was an inspiring experience, both from me being inspired to me inspiring others. You see my twin brother and I were brought in to share our story of our Guinness World record rally to inspire kids to go for their goals during family weekend in Newport, Rhode Island on 4th of July weekend. Although I could be with my family having a barbecue or watching fireworks, inspiring the youth who will build our future is just as important to me. My intention was to make a person's day better, one person at a time, one autograph at a time and one tennis game at a time.

In the end, I wasn't the only person inspiring others but so was someone who wasn't even from this country but was a welcome addition to the weekend: Nicolas Mahut, a professional tennis player from France. He recently accomplished something extraordinary in having the longest tennis match in history against John Isner. When asked how many shirts he went through in the 3-day marathon, with the final set ending 70-68 in games he said "I went through 2 shirts the first day, 2 shirts the second day and 1 shirt the final day." I am so impressed by his humbleness and genuine happiness for the exposure this will give the game of tennis. He was informed that more than 170 thousand people Googled his name the other day and when asked what he thought of that he exclaimed in a heavy French accent "That's a lot!"

My brother and I were fortunate to get the chance to meet him and share autographs since we are all world record holders. He asked me when we started our 15 hour rally and I told him the first year at about 4:30pm until past 5:00am but in our second year we planned better, starting at 9:00am and ending at 12:01am. "That's a record that I can't break" stated Mahut when he found it was a continuous rally with one ball almost 15 hours. I told Nicolas that "we only set one world record whereas you set 12 of them."

Serena Williams understands the importance to make a difference. When interviewed after winning Wimbledon for the fourth time and her 13th Grand Slam she said "At the end of the day, I would love to open more schools in Africa or the United States. I would like to be remembered, OK, she was a tennis player but, wow, she really did a lot to inspire and help other people. That's what I think about. Not Serena Williams won X amount of Grand Slams."

I asked about his mental toughness and what it took to serve so many times being only one game away from losing the match and he said he didn't think about that but rather he focused on each point as they came to try to find a way to beat John. In the end he said he couldn't find a way to win. But I know that there were no losers in that marathon match. Both John Isner and Nicolas Mahut have created history which may never be re-written so long as tennis doesn't have a tiebreak for the final set at tournaments such as Wimbledon. Considering the fact that John Isner had to hit two consecutive clean winners to rise to victory that match wasn't lost at all: Tennis History was made and a lot people were inspired in the process, including me.

Suggested Viewing:
Nicolas Mahut donates memorabilia from the longest match