EMBRACE DELUSION

“In my family, nobody's playing tennis. Not a single one person. And since a very young age, I'm a big fan of video games. And I was spending way too much time on the Wii when I was young. And one day my mom just came back from work and she was a bit upset that I was playing that much. So she literally bought the first racket that she found in a store. And I went straight to the tennis court next to my house and that's how I start tennis.”

“I don't think so. I know these are our American universities. I don't mind kids coming from abroad to get a great education in the United States. If you want to play college tennis and top college tennis, look, if you're good, you're going to play. Right? And I think college, the product, Stevie talked about on Monday, how many players are in the top 50 that played college tennis. And a lot of them are foreigners. I think the college tennis product right now is as strong as it's ever been.”

“So basically, we take the entire universe and the size of it is around 90 billion light years. Each galaxy has between 100 to 200 billion stars. There is most likely between 1 to 2.5% chances to have a planet or exoplanet that can be as same as Earth in a way that life can appear on that planet. When you put it like that, it's actually scary because we all know that our galaxy is pretty young. Statistically, it's impossible that we're alone.”

“Then after COVID came when I was 18, and at that time, for like a year and a half, I couldn't really play some tennis. And I actually thought about switching into like a professional e-sport career compared to tennis. I was very good at two video games. I was very good at Fortnite and Call of Duty. So basically in Fortnite, I was ranked in the top 1000 in Europe. And Call of Duty, I was also like close to that ranking.”

“I'm actually doing cards, cards trick, mostly. And when I played, when I played juniors, everyone called me the Magician because I was literally showing off all of my magic tricks in every single day. And since then, everyone kept that nickname, especially the players like my age, they all call me the Magician. So I just kept the nickname. I still have the cards in my bag just in case someone wants to see a magic trick.”

“I had a season in 2024 that I had the 35 racket broken basically. And I got over like, I don't know, over like 25 to 30 point penalty, like in a single season. So it was very tough for me to find a way to truly control my emotions, I guess. And it was like a very hard work. And it took me a lot of time to be able to control that thoughts and just saying to myself that sometimes I don't have to think sometimes I just have to go for it.”

“My coach always like told me that when you play against these big guys, I think the first thing that I have to think in my case is just like thinking that I'm better than them, even if it's completely delusional to say that. But basically, when you step on court and you say to yourself that I'm better than them and I'm the one who's, let's say, the favorite on that match. In my case, mentally, it worked in a way that I was just trying to say to myself that if I lose against that guy, it's not normal because I'm the one who's the favorite.”

“It's worth around, I would say, between five to $600,000 today. And so basically, I started that collection when I was little. So let's say, from my pocket, I put, let's say, $200,000, and now it's worth, I would say, $600,000 now. And so basically, I was always collecting when I was a kid, and Pokemon always followed me when I was a kid, when I was young, and especially during that period when I was by myself in the south of France.”