Documentary about Mardy Fish and his anxiety disorder: "It's a daily fight"
Mardy Fish was facing his biggest match, against Roger Federer at the US Open - and couldn't compete due to his anxiety disorder. He's told his story in a new Netflix documentary - and it's well worth seeing.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: Oct 06, 2021, 10:16 pm
“Mentally I was fine. I was happy to be a professional tennis player. To travel. Spending time with friends. To be able to eat and drink what I want. I had a normal career. And simply no success. "
Mardy Fish says this sentence sometime in the middle of the new Netflix documentary Untold: Breaking Point - and in retrospect one may well ask what would have happened if it had remained “unsuccessful”.
Where "no success" is relative: Fish was successful, he was in the top 100 for around ten years. But at some point he wanted more. Didn't want to reproach himself later for not having given everything, perhaps being able to achieve more.
Fish turned his life inside out in 2009: no more milkshakes, no more fries, instead hardcore training and his own oxygen chamber, in which he spends every free minute. He hires a fitness coach, trains like an obsessive man, and loses twelve pounds within two months. Fish suddenly wins, beating his best buddy Andy Roddick for the first time. And Rafael Nadal. Finishes in the top 10. Make it to the ATP Finals in London. Fish is suddenly successful.
And is in the spotlight as the new number 1 in the USA. Even when it stopped running in 2012 and the pressure increased. One night, Fish wakes up with a heart rate of 240 and comes to the hospital. An operation on the heart follows - and for the first time "those unpleasant thoughts". The fish cannot yet classify.
"You don't have to play"
Everything collapses for him at the US Open 2012. In the third round game, a night session, against Gilles Simon, he wins the third set - and for the first time everything pounds on him on the tennis court. "My only safe place was now taken," says Fish. He wins, but can't remember the end afterwards. And can - or must - then play against Roger Federer. Everything comes together again on the journey. Racing heart, fears, doubts. Until his wife says the decisive sentence: "You don't have to play."
Fish is irritated. “Of course I have to play.” He trained physically, mentally and emotionally for this moment, “The thought of withdrawing was absurd.” Then he thought for a moment and thought: “Wait a minute. I don't have to play. "
Fish actually doesn't play, he doesn't play for a long time after that. At home he locks himself up for months until he finally see a therapist who diagnoses a "very, very severe anxiety disorder". "Two months longer, without help, without medication, without someone who would have been there for me all the time - I don't know if I would still be here," says Fish.
He did not overcome his anxiety disorder today either, but he knows how to deal with it. "I can't wait for the day when I have all this behind me," he explained to his doctor. "I don't like to tell you that: but it will always be a part of your life," he replied. "It's still a daily fight," says Fish, "but I win it every day."
Mardy Fish and the topic of "Mental Health"
Untold: Breaking Point is a good viewing tip in many ways, especially at a time when the subject of “mental health” is finally one that more and more people are talking about, thanks to Naomi Osaka and gymnast Simone Biles. Fish first unpacked in 2015 , when he last appeared at the US Open. He wanted to help other people deal with it and seek help, he explained. "It's called 'mental health,' but the head is part of the body," Fish recently told the New York Times . “It's an injury. You just can't see them. "
For tennis freaks, the documentary is of course also very interesting from other perspectives: At the beginning there is the merciless US funding system, through which the next superstar is to be trimmed. That will be Andy Roddick, who keeps having his say; Fish had lived with the Roddick family at the beginning of his career, under the strict regime of Papa Roddick. While Andy Roddick appeared on the tennis stage with self-confidence and never missed a show, he now explains how much of it was put on - he was incredibly insecure, just covered everything over well.
Roddick also brings up a crazy fact: “When I stepped down, I was a shadow of the player I was in top form. When Mardy quit he was arguably the best. It must have been an ordeal. ”But he was the best version of a friend when he stopped playing. One of the friends Mardy Fish needed so badly at the time