As he embarks on the final tournament of his decade-and-a-half-long pro career, Mardy Fish can look back with pride on a long list of on-court accomplishments: more than 300 wins, six ATP titles, a Top 10 ranking, an Olympic silver medal, Davis Cup heroics and more. But his greatest achievement may just be the way he has carried himself in the public eye while battling what has proven to be his most dogged opponent: a debilitating anxiety disorder.
To really understand his fight, you’ve got to turn back the clock to 2010. That’s the year Fish, facing a mid-career identity crisis, began to plunge in the rankings, at one point falling as low as No. 108. Though the American once roomed with Andy Roddick in his days at Boca Prep, he didn’t necessarily share his pal’s till-the-last-ball-is-struck work ethic. Fortunately for Fish, the rankings drop turned out to be a wakeup call. He decided then and there that he would no longer simply go through the motions.
His wife, attorney/“Deal Or No Deal” model Stacey Gardner, whom Fish calls “his rock,” along with trainer Christian LoCascio, helped the admittedly out-of-shape/out-of-desire veteran find purpose once again. First came the slim down. Fish went from 203 pounds to a more ideal playing weight of 170, and the subsequent improvement in conditioning led to an immediate turnaround in the win-loss column.
For a while there, the paunch-paring was all anyone could talk about. Invariably, Fish would caution the media masses not to confuse his current incarnation with the player he was before he saw the light. He openly admitted that he could have pushed more, that he could have dug deeper earlier in his career. (He went as far as to call himself “an old, broken‑down player that wasn't working as hard as maybe he could have.”) Yes, there were regrets. But things had changed. “I'm a different player,” he said.
A different player indeed. A reinvigorated Fish began to surge in the rankings as if making up for lost time. Along came wins over the Andys – Murray (twice) and Roddick (twice) – titles in Newport and Atlanta, runner-up finishes at Queen’s Club and in Cincinnati. In a matter of six months he’d played himself back into the Top 20. His serve, long an effective weapon, was now complemented with a Lendl-like conditioning regimen. By April 2011, a year in which he posted a career-best quarterfinal showing on the lawns of Wimbledon and even upset Rafael Nadal in Cincinnati, he’d cracked the Top 10, peaking at a career-best No. 7.
Then came 2012. On the surface, a quarterfinal loss to Juan Monaco in Miami seemed like just another hard day at the office. But what few of us knew at the time was that, immediately following the match, Fish was taken to the hospital having experienced severe cardiac arrhythmia, better known as an irregular heartbeat. His heart was racing uncontrollably. As a result, he skipped the clay-court campaign, including Roland Garros, and in May underwent a surgical procedure to correct a condition that Fish said made his heart feel like “it was going to burst out of my chest.”
It was scary enough to think that the increasingly insightful Fish might be at risk for a stroke, heart failure or even cardiac arrest during match play, in the gym or on the practice court. But it was the psychological baggage that came along with his ailment that really seemed to take a toll.
“It’s actually relatively easy when you’re out there,” he reflected. “You’ve got so many things to worry about: your opponent and what's going on and how you need to play. We have so many things going through our heads about how we need to focus and this and that. So that part isn’t hard. It’s sort of before and after that are the toughest.”
Fish resurfaced that summer, even posting quarterfinal finishes in Toronto and Cincinnati, but everything changed at the US Open. A telltale third-round match with Frenchman Gilles Simon lingered deep into the Queens night, ending after 1 a.m. Fish won the more-than-three-hour affair, 6-1, 5-7, 7-6, 6-3, setting up a dream second-week clash with the indomitable Roger Federer. But there would be no celebration. Instead, he called his victory over Simon “some of the worst times I have ever had.”
As he would later attest, “That's when I knew I had some issues.”
Only hours before his matchup with Federer, Fish withdrew from the tournament citing “precautionary measures.” Few outside of his inner circle (Stacey; his coach, Mark Knowles; agent John Tobias, etc.) were privy to the exact details, but fans, media and officials could sense that this was no garden-variety withdrawal.
“I saw him the next day at the courts, and he explained to me what happened,” Federer recalled recently. “He couldn't quite explain, maybe didn't understand the magnitude of it. It was quite intense, actually. I remember looking at him, going, ‘I don't understand, but I wish you all the best.’ Who knew that it was going to take him that long to come back?”
So shaken was Fish that, once back in California, he didn’t dare venture beyond the boundaries of his L.A. home for a period of three months. The farthest he ventured during those difficult days, he said, was his backyard. Here was a guy who had spent the better part of his tennis-playing life jetting from city to city, country to country, suddenly in self-imposed solitary confinement, unable even to back his own car out of his own driveway.
“I was basically getting anxiety attacks every 30 minutes of the day at that time,” he told USA Today in 2014. “That was the worst of it. They would just never stop.”
It was during these months of seclusion, Fish confided, that he “retired and non-retired” in his head nearly every week.
“There was a while where I was done,” he said. “I had gotten it through my head that I was done when I was just trying to get my normal life back, just trying to have normalcy again.”
Despite the fact that this sense of normalcy would never return, not fully anyway, Fish forged on, a stubborn world-class athlete who simply refused to abandon a sport he’d been in love with since he was barely out of diapers. Had he been in the midst of a steady decline, it might have been easier to let go, Father Time having taken a firm grip on his shoulders. It’s an inevitability, after all; something that happens to everyone who relies so heavily on their body for their livelihood.
But the circumstances here were unique. This crisis, this storm, as the sports psychology crowd might deem it, came along when Fish was playing some of the most inspired ball of his career.
“I left the game in the Top 10 in the world,” he said, “and that's pretty hard to deal with.”
After pulling out of the Open, Fish didn’t play for another five months. But even though some of his closest friends were beginning to hang ’em up (Roddick retired in 2012, James Blake in 2013), this steadfast son of a teaching pro wasn’t quite ready to call it quits. Though he would only play selectively, aided by anti-anxiety medication Fish returned to the ATP World Tour. Since that fateful day in Flushing Meadows, he’s played just 13 tour-level singles matches, winning only five of those. He didn’t play at all in 2014, an otherwise busy year in which he welcomed his newborn son, Beckett. In July, he rekindled a feel-good doubles partnership with his old roommate, Roddick. His most recent marquee triumph, one Fish called his “biggest win in two years,” came only weeks ago, over 20th-ranked Serb Viktor Troicki in Cincinnati (6-2, 6-2).
But it’s not so much about the wins and losses these days. It’s about taking the court and ultimately walking away from the sport on his own terms. Earlier this summer, using the hashtag “lastride,” Fish announced via Twitter that he would finish his career at the US Open, where in his last four appearances he has reached the round of 16 or better.
“It's no secret, I'd love to go back to the US Open, where it sort of all came crashing down for me in 2012, [and] sort of conquer that place,” said Fish. “By 'conquer' I mean just get back out on the court there. I have a lot of demons from that place.”
And so here stands the exorciser: Mardy Fish, 33 years old, ranked an unaccustomed No. 574 in the world, father and family man, someone to whom a psychiatrist is as integral a member of his entourage as a physio, coach or trainer, seeking to chase those demons from the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center once and for all. Whether he strings together a few inspirational wins or bows out in the first round, merely taking the court will be victory enough.
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Fish Tales
- After falling to the Bryan Brothers at an exhibition in his home state of Minnesota, Fish and partner Andy Roddick settled a bet by running naked outside their bus in 10-degree weather.
- He once broke his toe while kicking a football barefoot.
- After falling just short of the ultimate prize at the 2004 Athens Games, he rued, “If I had done a lot more of this stuff [off-court workouts], maybe I would have won the gold medal instead of the silver.”
- Supposed pal Roddick quipped, “Mardy is a new father. His son, Beckett, is just the best. Thank goodness he looks like his mother.”
- He hit a 370-foot home run in batting practice at Shea Stadium in 2004. He later added six more round-trippers at Dodger Stadium in 2011.
- Fish played basketball and tennis alongside Roddick at Florida’s Boca Prep.
- Each year he hosts Mardy's Tennis and Jake's Music Fest along with country music star Jake Owen.
