Noah Rubin on finding happiness in the grind

"I got to my career-high ranking at about No. 120 in the world. Not a lot changed… I just didn’t feel, I say this line all the time, but I didn’t feel—even at that point where I was at my best—that tennis was conducive to happiness." 

Noah Rubin appears on the TENNIS.com Podcast this week with Nina Pantic and Irina Falconi. The 23-year-old New Yorker has been ranked as high as No. 125 in the world, and is the mastermind behind Behind the Racquet. 

Rubin won the 2014 junior Wimbledon title, dominated for one year at Wake Forest and then took his talents to the pro tour at 19, where he has captured four ATP Challengers. This year, he realized that prioritizing happiness and mental health was more important to him than obsessing over forehands and ranking points. 

Not afraid to speak his mind, Rubin is doing his part to dissipate the stigma around mental health and is using his podcast with Mike Cation, Coffee Cast, and Behind the Racquet to give players safer spaces to be more open. He just turned the social media account into a website, complete with BTR swag. 

Rubin points out some of the bigger problems facing the ATP and WTA, and has hopes to one day go even further than fighting for solutions and create his own professional system, which he loosely outlines in the episode. 

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