Richard Tompkins

I had a tennis coach in my youth with whom I worked very closely with who I felt sort of did not like me very much in the sense that he saw that I had some talent but did not really care, which he was completely correct about: I didn’t really care much for this sport. I started playing tennis because it was fun, but really took it seriously because of my father. Nonetheless, tennis has had a positive influence on my development so I’m not really complaining or anything. I’m just sort of stating the facts. 

Anyways, Richard was a very passionate human being who I considered to be a second father figure to me. He really cared about tennis; you could just tell that he genuinely loved the sport and wanted to pass on the legacy to his pupils. I, however, was just in it for the exercise. I’ve always been more of an academic, for better or for worse. 

Yet, Richard taught me what it means to work hard. He had a methodology for training that was really intense: when we did conditioning, it was looked upon favorably if you were able to throw up. It was a sort of military kind of thing that he instigated at this academy, which I worked at briefly out of necessity after leaving medical school. 

What I learned at that academy was to apply that method and that passion toward things that I cared about, which quite honestly is, again, more on the academic side. I knew there was no real money in tennis, even though it is a business and people do make a living coaching. I was never quite that good at it, to be honest, so I didn’t really care that much for staying in the sport even thought it is still fun to play today and a good form of exercise. Yet, it could serve as a means to a form of livelihood as I’ve seen in some of the other players who’ve taken tennis seriously but perhaps not academics. 

I think what I’m trying to say is that even though Richard and I were never that close, much like my own father, who’s very interested in tennis, Richard served as a sort of second father figure despite a cool relationship between the two of us. My like my relationship with my father, we are just two very different people. Yet, I think about him sometimes and the mostly positive influence he has had on my life. I hope he’s doing well.