"It really was love at first sight for me" - Felix Auger-Aliassime pens heartfelt "love letter" to tennis

Friday, 24 February 2023 at 06:00

Felix Auger-Aliassime wrote a touching love letter to tennis, detailing the highs and lows of his career while expressing his hopes for the future.

Auger-Aliassime addressed tennis in a video for the ATP social media and recalled his first memory of being introduced to the sport. He recollected falling in love with tennis and expressed that his initial experience with the sport was just as good as his present experience.

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"Dear tennis, I remember when I was first introduced to you, I was 3 or 4 years old," wrote the Canadian. "It really was love at first sight for me. I always remember having a tennis racket in my hand, going to the tennis court. So the first meeting was as good as it is now,"

The World No.9 expressed his gratitude to the sport for teaching him the importance of perseverance, acceptance and resilience. He divulged that he had learned to find joy in competition and introspection through tennis.

"You have given me a lot of different things," he added. "You’ve taught me a lot of great values of perseverance, acceptance, resilience, and just also the pleasure of competing. The pleasure of digging deep within yourself and finding ways to improve. So all these values are such important things to learn."

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Auger-Aliassime admitted that it can be hard to love tennis sometimes because of the challenges it creates for all professional players. He referred to his relationship with the sport as a "love-hate" relationship. However, the Canadian contended that setbacks and disappointments help the players to learn and improve as players and as individuals.

"Well, sometimes it's hard to love you," he explained. "It's kind of a love-hate relationship in a way, because you challenge me and you challenge all players to push themselves to be better all the time and to accept losses.

"I think setbacks, doubting yourself at times too, that's the tough part about it. But at the end it all makes sense when you learn from those times. And it makes sense because you learn a lot about yourself and you improve as a person."

Arthur Ajayi

Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.

As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.

With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.

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