4. Wayne Ferreira: Former #6 ATP tennis player talks about his tennis journey, being an entrepreneur, now an ATP tour coach of Frances Tiafoe, live from the Australian Open

Grand Slam Journey

Wayne Ferreira is a former ATP tour professional tennis player from Johannesburg South Africa. Wayne had an outstanding tennis career. He won 15 top-level singles titles and 11 doubles titles. His career-high rankings were world no. 6 in singles and world no. 9 in doubles. Wayne is the third tennis player with 56 consecutive Grand Slam appearances in men's tennis.

During this podcast, Wayne and I talk about his upbringing and his route to tennis. We discuss some of his wins and achievements and the diverse styles of tennis players he competed against. We also discuss his longevity and being able to compete at the topmost levels for 16 years and playing against the best tennis players of three different eras starting from Borg, Lendl, McEnroe, Connors then competed against top players such as Edberg, Becker, Sampras, Agassi, Chang, Ivanisevic and at the end of his career having an opportunity to play against Federer and his era of younger uprising generation at that time.

Wayne achieved the semi-finals of the Australian Open twice and we also discuss his three Olympic appearances.

We talk about Wayne's transition from professional tennis to becoming a father and focusing on family life, his entrepreneur journey, and then transition to becoming an ATP coach. Wayne is currently coaching Francis Tieafoe.

What stands out to me from this conversation is Wayne's talent, commitment to work hard, and ability to easily transition between different journeys and careers of his life. It is almost as the life is unfolding itself for him as he moves forward through different stages. He makes it seems very graceful and almost effortless. I appreciate Wayne's straightforwardness, transparency, and all he shared about his life journey. I love how grounded Wayne seems to be and his humble, open and warm personality.

Some of my favorite quotes from this podcast:

1. On never giving up: "Ultimately you want success at the end and I still had the ability to focus and concentrate and fight hard enough for what it is that I wanted even though it may have taken me much longer than I would have liked it to. I still wanted to try to succeed."
2. On losing: "Sometimes losing when you are younger is better than winning because you learn how to compete and you learn how to learn to win."

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