Former US tennis star Mardi Fish talks openly about her anxiety disorder that crippled her growing career, and why mental health matters
Netflix movie opening minutes breaking point, an old video on “mental toughness”, is routinely shown to young tennis players at an academy. An instructor clearly outlines the steps to be followed, as if it were a DIY guide: “No crying, no complaints”. Mardi was one of those kids at the Fish Academy who taught him from an early age that in competitive sport, you have to keep your head down, and that it would be a crime to show any weakness.
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If champions like this can be created at the academy, American men’s tennis will continue to rule the world. But it hasn’t been since the ’90s, and Fish’s story is the epitome of what can go wrong when the mental health issues at play are blown up and eventually blown up. breaking point, Part of Silent The series by Netflix, Fish’s rise as America’s next big hope, her peak height, and sharp decline when she suffered from a severe anxiety disorder, complicated by a serious heart condition.
The hour and 20-minute documentary about Jitney Fish is also about his childhood friend and contemporary Andy Roddick. While America was savoring the success of the Williams sisters, the men’s game hit a wall, and Fisch and Roddick were expected to pull it all down and start a new era.
Their association began at the plush Saddlebrook Tennis Academy in Tampa Bay, Florida, which the American Tennis Association recognized as the nursery for finding the next Pete Sampras/Jim Courier/Andre Agassi. In the eyes of many, including Fish, the fiercely determined Roddick was marked as a star student. Roddick’s parents were convinced that they found their sporting match for their son in the young fish, and even took him to their home for several months.
Priceless home videos from the Roddick family make the film rich. One of the better anecdotes was how former Army man Roddick Sr. would get his son and fish out of bed at 5 a.m. for training. It looked like boot camp didn’t stop at Saddlebrook. Back on the court, friendly rivals faced off in an epic 2003 Cincinnati Masters final. How Roddick outmaneuvered his opponent on the verge of defeat is another captivating side story.
Andy Roddick at the 2015 Atlanta Open, when he came out of retirement to play doubles with Mardi Fish. photo Credit: David Goldman
That Roddick was ready to not only lend his voice to the film, but also highlight his weaknesses, giving more perspective on the players and their personal struggles as an icon. The credit for this goes to the show’s producers Chapman Way and MacLaine Way (also producer of W.wild wild country) that Roddick – the biggest star of the two – doesn’t steal the show. There is sympathy and mutual respect for each other.
It took a lot of courage for Phish to learn everything the mental toughness video was being taught and tell the world about the churning inside him. Even after experiencing such a rapid heartbeat, he had to have a cardiac catheter ablated that it looked like it would protrude out of his chest.
Although it was a diagnosis of severe anxiety disorder that eventually crippled his career, around the same time Roddick retired prematurely at the age of 30. It was against Roddick’s longtime nemesis Roger Federer that Fish made the biggest decision of his life; To draw out the moments before an anticipated US Open clash in 2012.
Phish’s revelations and the timing of this film’s release are relevant given the recent afflictions of Naomi Osaka’s mental health and why professional sport needs to give players an environment to speak freely about stress. Singles tennis can be a very lonely place because you have no one to bounce ideas off of. A recent Netflix release on forever sad Osaka goes deep on her ethnicity and battle for social causes, but it’s Fish’s candor about her mental health that hits hard and strong, and to the point highlights that the sport needs to reevaluate how its weak stars look.
A more sensitive approach to mental toughness could have yielded different results. Perhaps Fish could have won the Grand Slam; Could Roddick add more titles to his single US Open? We’ll never know.
Untold: Breaking Point is currently streaming on Netflix
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