In honor of Black History Month, forner world No. 11, U.S. Davis Cup team member and Olympian, and 1996 WImbledon singles finalist Malivai Washington joins this week's episode of Courtside, the official US Open podcast. Washington joins co-host Marc Sterne to not only reflect on his tennis achievements, but also discuss what he's been doing since his retirement, and how his namesake charity foundation, a USTA Foundation National Junior Tennis and Learning (NJTL) chapter, is supporting under-resourced youth in Jacksonville, Fla.
Read excerpts from the interview in the Q&A below.
Were your parents big tennis fanatics? How did your path start in the world of tennis?
I have three sisters, two of whom play professional tennis, and then my brother, my younger brother, played professionally as well. My older sister played on the tour back in the '80s when there was very little money on the women's tour, but she played all the majors, and for a long time, she had bragging rights because she was the only person in the family to get to the Top 100. I eventually got [into the] Top 100 probably back in 1990, something like that, my first year out on tour. My brother played on tour and I think he topped out right about No. 250 in the world. He and I traveled a fair bit and played some doubles back in the early-to-mid '90s. My little sister, Mashona, topped out at No. 49 in the world is back in the mid-2000s, early-2000s. There were there were six of us and we all played tennis, four of us played on tour, which is kind of cool to think about.
I really had nothing to do with it, but my dad, who started me and my older sister—I was 5, she was 8 years old—he was he was a big fan of tennis. He played; he taught himself how to play. This is in Flint, Mich. He literally took a wooden racket and sawed off the handle and regripped it, so there's a hole in the bottom of the racquet ... That was my tennis racquet. This is back in about 1975. He just started us playing. He practiced with his buddies and then he'd bring us out on the court, start tossing a ball out of his hand, and we were hitting. Within a couple of years we were playing tournaments. I played my first tournament at seven and won my first tournament at eight years old, and it just became the thing we did. We went to school, we went to church every Sunday, we ate, we slept and we played tennis. That was all we did. That was that was our norm. Looking back on it, it's kind of funny. I don't know if I could swing this with my two kids, but we didn't hang out with friends. We didn't go to parties. We didn't really go to movies. Tennis was our thing. That was just a normal upbringing for us. It was just what we did, and fortunately it worked out. But even amongst my brothers and sisters, it worked out to varying degrees. I think some of my siblings I think, burned out a little bit. But under that nonstop tennis focus, I was able to thrive under it.
What's kind of funny about all of our statistics? Everyone in my family, including my siblings who never played on tour, won this little tournament in Flint, Mich., called the Flint Junior Open. Multiple siblings won it multiple times. I never won the Flint Junior Open. [laughs] Why? I don't know how that happened, but of course, I have the bragging rights. I just start listing off a couple of things like the Olympics and Davis Cup and stuff like that. Then, Mashona, my sister's, like, 'Okay, I played Fed Cup, so we're even there.' But of course, I have the trump card where I could just throw out the Wimbledon final, and then that kind of that shuts down the conversation.
One of the things that people talked about was that this was the first time an African American man had gotten to the quarterfinals, to the semifinals, and the final since Arthur Ashe. What was your experience like on tour?
Being on the ATP Tour was tremendous, and it's such an international tour. Players from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia. It's a very international place on the men's tour and women's WTA tour. I felt comfortable, I felt appreciated. I felt wanted out there on tour. Of course, no matter where you go, you're going to find knuckleheads who were ready, willing and able to make comments. I actually think, maybe when I was a junior, before pro, before college, back in the 1980s, that's where I almost felt there was there was a little bit more of push back where, literally, [at] sanctioned tournaments, junior events, you might go to a city and they'd be playing at three or four different sites and you couldn't go play at that particular site, your matches were not scheduled at that site, because at that club they did not allow Black players. Those were things that actually happened in the in the 1980s.
Being on the tour was a tremendous experience, and I knew, especially as I started having success, when my matches were being played, there was a good chance the majority of the Black population on site was was going to gravitate over to my match. I had a tremendous amount of support, which adds to the pressure. But I never looked at it and said, 'Well, you know, one day, I want to be the best Black player on tour.' I really wanted to be the best player on tour. If I was the best I could be, or the best player on tour, by default, I would also be the best Black player on tour. That was really my focus, and there was always the comparisons to to Arthur Ashe, and that is fun to think about. The greatness of Arthur Ashe, I was being compared to that and unfortunately, I was not able to live up to his standard that that he set. I came very close with the Wimbledon final, which was which was really a highlight of my career. But make no mistake, me playing throughout the '90s, just looking at it a social from a social perspective, [was] very, very different than Arthur playing in the '60s and '70s.
I could imagine the pressure and the mental, physical, emotional pressure going on in him when he's going to places and people are overtly saying, 'Hey, we don't want you here.' But he did it. He was able to play with such grace, and when I'm in my 20s, I didn't appreciate what he went through nearly as much as I do now or when I was in my 30s or late-20s towards the end of my career. But I would like to think that I represented myself and my family at a high level and gave it everything I had. That's all you can do. You can only do what you can do. I don't look back on my career and say, 'Man, I wish I had worked harder.' 'I wish I had done this.' In the moment, I was doing everything I thought I needed to do to succeed, and it gave me a significant amount of success--not the success I wanted or as much as I wanted, but thank God I was able to have a world-class career for four, eight years and couple of years with injury-ridden knees. But welcome to life, I like to say.
I read that you had a chance to to chat or to meet Arthur on a couple of occasions. One of those, I think, was when you were leaving the University of Michigan to turn pro, and I loved his response: 'That's great, but education's important. Are you sure you want to do that? That's so indicative. I never met Arthur, but he's one of my heroes. That's just who he was. I think he said, and I'm going to butcher his quote, but it was something to the effect of, 'If I'm only remembered as a tennis player, then I failed as a human being.'
That's one of his great quotes, and you got it right. He did not want to be remembered as a tennis player because tennis was a part of his life, but it wasn't who he was. A funny story that I have about Arthur, or it's a ridiculous story about me, is one day he he came to the University of Michigan. I can't for the life of me figure out exactly why he was there or remember why, but he was at the University of Michigan. He comes out to to practice. I think I was the top collegiate player at the time. We took some pictures and with young people, I always tell them today, 'Take advantage of those opportunities that are right in front of you. Don't be afraid to ask the question. Don't be afraid to reach out to someone and ask for advice.'
At 20 years old, I'm face-to-face with Arthur Ashe at the University of Michigan. Do you think I said, 'Hey, Mr. Ashe, do you think we can trade phone numbers? Can I call you every once in a while? Do you mind if I ask you for some advice when you get back home?' Do you think I asked him that? No. It never even dawned on me that here is a tremendous opportunity and resource, and one of the greats of the greats, right in front of me, who would bend over backwards to give me a little piece of advice or get on the phone with me. But it really had to be me taking that initiative. It's not going to be him holding my hand saying, 'Make sure you call me next week.'
I relay that to kids and young adults all the time. So often we have opportunities right in front of us that we really need to take advantage of, and that's a big one that I that I didn't take advantage of. But fortunately, I had an opportunity to meet him ... a short time later. We were at the West Side Tennis Club in New York at a luncheon, and I sat next to him, we talked a little bit, and I told him I was thinking about turning pro again, and again, I think he wanted to put a little bit of doubt in my mind about turning pro, not because he didn't think I was good enough, but he felt that education was so important. Long after my tennis career was over, I did go back and get a degree in finance from the University of North Florida, ao I felt education was that important that I needed to do that.
I think if he looked down not just at your career now, but at your life, I think he would be smiling. That leads me to talk about the things that you've gotten into after your career. You're a realtor down in Florida. You got a big a realty business and you have your foundation [the Malivai Washington Youth Foundation]. Talk to me about that, the inspiration for it, what it does and how that impacts kids?
When I was in my mid-20s, 26 years old, actually little before that, my dad and I started the foundation, called the Mal Washington Foundation, and all it was was when I was out on tour, people would come up to my dad--hee was traveling with me--and they would say, 'Hey, do you think Mal could come out and talk to some of our kids?' We would help them out with little grants, $500 donations, something like that, to help them buy a couple of balls and racquets, and I'd talk to them, but there was nothing really in place. I was talking to a good friend of mine a couple of years later, Teri Florio, who's my current executive director, and I said, 'You know, I have this foundation. We don't do any programs. I'd love to try to do something in Jacksonville, Fla., where I'm living, with kids and tennis.'
From that conversation, within 12 months, we had a little partnership with the Boys and Girls Club just introducing kids to tennis. We were having our first fundraiser. But now fast forward 26 years, and we have built, raised funds and built a youth center, raised funds and built a teen center, have an endowment to set ourselves up as an organization that will last long after I am gone and our current board members are gone, and our current staff are gone. But really, what we try to do is we take a group of kids in downtown Jacksonville, in and around Jacksonville, kindergarten through high school and really give them life skills, tennis and education. The majority of the families that we serve are lower-income individuals, a lot of challenging situations, a lot of single-parent households, a lot of lifelong renters, and challenging situations where maybe the dad is not present, maybe the dad is incarcerated. But regardless, we have the saying on the wall that I heard Katrina Adams, former player and USTA president, say, 'Take advantage of your advantage.' We tell the kids, 'Regardless of what your situation is, this foundation, all of our sponsors, our mentors, our teachers, our staff, our volunteers, this is your advantage. This is an advantage that you have every single day, five days a week, year after year after year, that thousands of kids right here in Jacksonville do not have.'
One of the coolest things is, how often do kids get to hit tennis balls with Venus Williams or Andre Agassi? Not too often. We have had kids who've hit balls with both of them. We take kids up to the US Open. So that is their advantage. But really what it's trying to do is have a comprehensive after-school program to keep kids on track to help them realize their full potential. It's my belief that every kid, including my own two kids, have all the potential in the world if they're given those opportunities, if they have that sustained support system year after year after year. At some point, their own drive and motivation has to kick in, but so often, there are millions of kids throughout America who don't have that support system and they're struggling mightily. What's good about it is for a lot of those kids, that challenge can be a huge motivator and serve them very well throughout their lives, because if you can struggle through some of those formative years and make it out and take advantage of those advantages right in front of you, oftentimes the success you're going to find on the other end of being uncomfortable can be absolutely tremendous.
We just do everything we can to keep our kids in the program as many years as we can. We feel like through that sustained effort that how we are going to have the greatest impact. We're creating, and have created in the last six months, a little program to serve those former students who are in that 20-to-30-yea-rold range. So we'll continue to be a resource for them years after they've left the program.
We have found when kids are on our program, they have that ongoing support system, and anyone listening to this will know, just because your child graduates from high school and is 18, 19 years old, it doesn't mean they're good and they're good to go out on their own. Oftentimes, when they leave the foundation, our core programs, all of a sudden, a part of that support system is kind of taken away. In a way, they're now kind of pushed out there on their own, even if they're 19, 20, 21 years old. We have noticed that some of them struggle in those in those first few years in their twenties. So we say, 'Okay, how can we continue to provide a level of programing or support to them?' So that's what we're doing, and right now it's working.
Are there lessons or skills that you learned on the court in the world of tennis that you apply to real life or that you can imbue into these kids and say, 'Hey, these are lessons I learned on the court. Stick with them. It's going to help you out through tough situations in life.' Is that something that exists?
For sure. That was the whole idea behind starting our program, our after school programs, or our tennis programs and our partnership with the Boys and Girls Club. It was, 'How can I take the life lessons that I have learned from tennis, whether it's sportsmanship and hard work, or sticking to a task, respecting your opponent?' You know, there are sports out there, football, basketball, [where] it's like, 'How badly can I embarrass you?' 'I'm going to dunk on you and then look down on you.' Whereas in tennis, it's not about disrespecting your opponent. It's respecting your opponent, looking them in the eye, shaking their hand. So those were the type of things that we wanted to try to impart upon the kids we're serving through the sport of tennis, and I think it's worked.
What we've realized over time is there needed to be more than a tennis program, and that's when we decided to add the life-skills programs. and the education programs, and really address the needs from elementary to middle school to high school to college to post-college.
You talk about tennis teaching you how to get out of tough situations. This is my segue into your run at Wimbledon. You were in one of the toughest situations anybody can find themselves on a court. You were down 5-1 in the fifth set in the semifinals to Todd Martin. ... You kept playing. You made him keep playing and you found a way to win that match, 10-8 in the fifth?
It's kind of funny, I can't remember because I never watched it. The funny thing about wins is in your mind. It was like, 'Well, I was supposed to win that, you know?' And the losses, you're like, 'Oh man, how do you lose that match?' But down 5-1, how I've explained it is, it's the great thing about sports. Every year in every sport, every Grand Slam, there are things that defy logic. Novak Djokovic winning 22 [majors] and Rafa [Nadal] winning 22, and Roger [Federer] winning 20 and Serena [Williams] winning 22, that just defies logic. I mean, how does that even happen? How do I come back from 5-1 down against Todd Martin, one of the biggest server on tour, on grass? I don't know.
I jokingly say that, one day, if I make it to heaven, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask God and say, 'Hey, God, you have all these players out there with like 20 majors. Why couldn't I just get one?' I have this vision of God saying, 'Really, that's the question? The reason you made the final and won from 5-1 down is because you prayed so hard on the changeover. I said, 'You know what? It's 5-1. Let's throw them a bone.' ... I threw you a bone, and now, here you are in heaven, and you're sitting here asking me why you didn't get win tournament. Come on, Mal!' That's my vision of what might happen.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. To listen to the full interview, and for more episodes of Courtside, click here. To learn more about the USTA Foundation, click here.
