Big man on court, part 3
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August 4, 2023
After toiling in obscurity for several years on professional tennis’s primary minor league circuit, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), Chris Eubanks’s fortunes began turning around in the summer of 2022.
In August of that year, he had a very successful U.S. Open. In the singles event, he won his first match before losing in the second round – earning $121,000. Meanwhile, he and a partner made it to the quarterfinals (last eight teams) in doubles, giving Eubanks another $48,000.
In January 2023 Eubanks repeated that singles performance at the Australian Open, winning one match before losing. His paycheck for that effort was $106,000. Things were really beginning to look up for him.
More good news came his way when he won the Mallorca Open in Spain in late June, the week before Wimbledon started. This was Eubanks’s first ATP tour victory and paid him $156,00, his then-largest paycheck as a professional.
But at Wimbledon in July 2023, as we saw previously, Eubanks made a surprising run into the quarterfinals, earning another $430,000! Meanwhile, he won two doubles matches, earning $46,000. If you are keeping score, these four tournaments alone paid him $907,000 in less than a year.
For many professional athletes, including tennis players, that would not be much money. But for Eubanks it was an astronomical amount compared to what he had been earning.
More importantly, his “breakout” year as a professional player made him one of the highest-ranked Americans on the men’s Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour.
While American women have had much success in tennis in the recent past, no American man has won one of the sport’s major tournaments since 2003. Many tennis fans are thinking that Eubanks might be able to end that long drought.
Eubanks is extremely tall – 6 feet and 7 inches – with an outgoing personality. As commentator Pat McEnroe said of Eubanks at the end of Wimbledon: “He has a lot of charisma, a lot of character, and a lot of game. Chris Eubanks is my new favorite player!”
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