Gavin Young: Investing for the Future

Jannik Sinner started 2019 with three back-to-back tournaments in Monastir, Tunisia. He never made it past the round of 16. In his most successful weeks he earned $258; in the second week, where he lost in the first round, he earned $156. He arrived in Tunisia ranked 549th in the world, he left ranked 550th.

There are no shortcuts in tennis. Even the expressway to world no.1 features extended periods playing in unglamorous obscurity at mom and pop tennis clubs in countries you can’t pinpoint on a map. Points are worth more than prizes – a passport to tournaments where the prize money might just cover your flights to the next event as well as a coffee at the airport. From there, the world is your oyster.

For most players, even those with main-draw ambitions, college tennis offers a more reliable investment than spending your late teens on the tour: an education, access to world class coaching and facilities, quality competition and even the opportunity to dip into Futures events.

That’s been the approach of Gavin Young, and for the past four years, D1 Life has been working out well. The 22 year old senior is successfully developing his game at the University of Michigan while majoring in Economics, qualifying for Nationals in singles and doubles (he’s currently ranked 7th preseason in singles and, alongside Benjamin Kittay, 17th in doubles) and breaking into the top 750 in the world. Next year, with college behind him, he has ambitions of rising up the rankings while seeing the world.

Before featuring in our HOL '24 photoshoot, we sat down with Gavin to find out more about life as a student athlete and what makes him tick.

How’s college tennis working out for you?

So I'm playing in my final year, singles and doubles. I actually played a semester at the University of Minnesota, where my dad was the coach, but they cut their tennis program right on Covid. So that's when I transferred to Michigan, and I took a red shirt year at Minnesota. So I've had four years at Michigan.

Your mom and dad both played at college and are both coaches now?

Yeah, my dad played college tennis at Northwestern and my mom played college tennis at Minnesota. My dad's a college coach at Purdue now, and my mom coaches an adult program and she runs some junior programs as well. She's not in collegiate coaching, but she's still coaching tennis.

With them both being involved in the sport, was there an expectation on you to pursue tennis, or did it come naturally to you?

There wasn't necessarily an expectation, but I would say they introduced it at a very young age. But they also introduced other sports. Hockey, obviously, comes from Minnesota; basketball; some track. I just loved tennis. I loved watching my dad's team play and that kind of got me fired up. And, yeah, eventually, I wanted to stick to tennis and just give that a go.

So what did your early years in the game look like? Were you being hand-fed balls on a court at the age of three? Or was it like, ‘here's some rackets, go see what happens’?

Yeah, in a way, everything has changed now because there's all these green dot balls and red dot balls that you see younger players using to help them hit the ball and start at a young age. But, yeah, 15 years ago, they didn't really have that. So my parents would just drop feed, dropping balls for me when I was, like, three years old. And I was hitting tennis balls around the house too, breaking things. I still have my first racquet ever.

You mentioned you were playing other sports. What age were you when you really began to focus on tennis?

I stuck with baseball for the longest time, but right around eighth grade I transferred over to just play tennis. I love baseball and wanted to keep playing, but at the same time, it was just too time consuming, and I wasn't able to do both at the same time.

How was your progression? I know you showed a bunch of talent at high school, and your dad was coaching college teams. Were you jumping into practice with his teams, or was it kind of just sticking with your high school crew?

Yeah, there's probably some NCAA violations there. I wasn't hopping into their practices but I was hitting with them on my own time and during the summer when the guys were around. But, yeah, when I started focusing on tennis, I was able to practice a little bit more, and that definitely helped. It would have been really difficult to maintain all those other sports.

You’re pretty tall at 6’5”. Have you always been tall or were you more of a late developer? How has your height impacted your game?

I remember between freshman and sophomore year in high school, I grew so much, and I just had zero coordination. Everything was off. My knees would be hurting, my back would be hurting and I definitely remember a few times where I tripped over my own feet and ate it. Now it's an advantage with the kind of game style that I try to play – the height helps cover the net and with the serve it's a big factor too.

“Between freshman and sophomore year in high school, I grew so much, I just had zero coordination. Everything was off. I definitely remember a few times where I tripped over my own feet and ate it. Now (my height) is an advantage.”

I bet your parents couldn’t believe their grocery bill at that time, just consuming every calorie you could find.

Yeah, I still am! Trying to keep the weight up is tough to do.

How is your diet at college? I’m sure you want to live a normal college life to some degree, but you're also an athlete and you're big, so how tricky is it to eat healthy and consume enough calories every day?

Yeah, it's really difficult. That's one thing I wish we had in Michigan. We don't really have an athlete dining hall, which makes it more difficult to reach that daily quota of calories. It's really hard. It's easy to eat smoothies but with how much we're burning, it all adds up to be a lot. And like, sometimes you don't have time to cook, you have to study so you have to be smart and pack snacks. We have nutritionists on campus too which are a great resource for us: we'll tell them everything we've eaten, and then they'll come back and spit out numbers like, how much protein we consumed, how many calories, etc. And they'll tell you what you need or what you're missing, or, “hey, you're doing well on this”. But yeah, it's a struggle, for sure,

You're studying economics and entrepreneurship. How do you feel about the economics of the pro game, and do you have ambitions of going full time on the tour in the next couple of years?

Yeah, that's the plan – travel around and use tennis as a way to see new places. But also try to establish as high a ranking as I can within a couple years. As of now, that's the plan: try to give it a couple years and give it everything I have, and if I'm running out of gas, then maybe I'll try to go into the corporate world or or find a job like that. You know, tennis, it's not good pay at all, but you’ve gotta start from the bottom and work your way up. It's an investment, for sure. And I mean, you're not gonna profit a whole lot of money, and when you add up all the expenses, it typically doesn't turn out in your favor. But the goal is to get out of that Futures grind and work up to Challengers, where it's a little bit better and the purse is bigger.

“You’ve gotta start from the bottom and work your way up. It's an investment, for sure. And I mean, you're not gonna profit a whole lot of money. But the goal is to get out of that Futures grind and work up to Challengers, where it's a little bit better and the purse is bigger.”

Who are the success stories that have gone from the collegiate circuit onto the tour that you look up to?

I'd say the biggest one right now is probably Ben Shelton. He's my age. He played college tennis for a couple years and I played against him a few times back in the juniors when we were in high school. And, I guess he’s shown how you can use those resources in college to really improve at an exponential rate.

Anyone who watched the last series of Fargo will recognize this term ‘Minnesota nice’ and you seem to live up to that Minnesotan stereotype: polite, warm, engaged. But then tennis is a sport that rewards a certain ruthlessness – you get an opponent on the ropes and then you just knock them out, right? So how do you approach the mental side of the game?

The competitive side of me takes over. And, yeah, when it's you versus the guy, it's just so exciting. You don't have a team, you don't have anyone else to worry about, and then you just want to give everything you have and show that you're better. No matter who steps on the court across from me, I'm going to do whatever it takes just to beat the guy and take him down. So in a way, I guess you have to be a ruthless killer, but in your own gracious way – you don't want to be a bastard about it but like, it's a lonely sport, it's just you, you have to want it more.

“No matter who steps on the court across from me, I'm going to do whatever it takes just to beat the guy and take him down. You have to be a ruthless killer, but in your own gracious way.”

Something that most amateurs struggle with is maintaining attention for the duration of a match. How do you work through those kinds of things?

Tennis is a really emotional sport. You can have really high highs, and then you miss some easy shots and you get upset and feel like you want to break a racquet. The more you can stay level-headed and not have your emotions oscillate too much, the better you’ll play. Once you get excited your focus starts to wander, and it's hard to maintain your emotions. So yeah, I would say staying calm. Obviously, I don't think it's good to hold your emotions in – sometimes it's good maybe to let it out – but you don't want to do that too much. You have to take it point by point. You can’t look too far in the future, and you can't look in the past – you kind of have to have a short memory.

"Tennis is a really emotional sport. The more you can stay level-headed and not have your emotions oscillate too much, the better you’ll play."

You've played your whole life in a northern climate where you have real cold winters. How does that impact your game? Do you prefer playing indoors, or is it a huge relief to be outdoors once the sun comes out and the weather warms up?

I always like playing outdoors. In Minnesota, so much of the year is indoors. I think of tennis as an outdoor sport – most professional tournaments are outdoors so that's part of it. I mean, I think I'm pretty good indoors too, just because I've played so much. Maybe I have that edge over other people?

And how about different surfaces? Do you feel like you’re pretty adaptable?

Not too much. I've always played on hard courts. So adapting from a faster hard court to a slower hard court isn't too difficult, but switching from hard court to clay court, that's more of an adjustment, just because I've never really played too much on clay.

How's the typical college day look for you with studies and training commitments and real life stuff?

Today was kind of normal. We had a 7:15 workout this morning, and I had to rush back for a 9am class. Then an hour and a half break to eat some breakfast, then classes from 11:30 to 2:30. So class most of the morning, and then we'll have practice for a couple hours in the afternoon. We lift every Tuesday and Thursday and then practice 4-6pm afterwards. After all that I'll try to do some treatment, maybe some rehab, then try to get some dinner and catch up with studying. It’s a long day.

How much do you get to interact with athletes from other programs, and do you compare training schedules?

Yeah we see other athletes a bunch. Obviously every sport is different and incredibly hard in their own way. You see some sports like lacrosse and football and basketball where they’re in the gym all the time – every time I'm there, they're there. Tennis doesn't really help to be more muscular so it's just different training, but I think tennis kind of incorporates everything: strength training is a solid part, just for injury prevention and things like that, but on top of that, cardio is massive too. When you play long points, to bring your heart rate down is super important. So, long story short, I think tennis is a sport that kind of requires it all.

Which part of your game has improved the most since you've been at college?

I think my serve, and probably net play, has improved most. I've gotten a little bit stronger, and that's helped with my serve, helping me be more explosive. And yeah, I think I've learned kind of how to volley better and become a better doubles player, for sure.

What's the best sensation within tennis? What’s that defining sensation that if you could bottle it, it would be like a drug?

Yeah. I mean, it's nice to get off the court quick but those are hard to come by. For me, those three set matches where, maybe on paper, you're not supposed to win, but, but you end up squeaking through, those are always insane feelings. You finish up, and sit on the bench all fatigued – that's a great feeling. And also I love hitting aces. Aces are fun to hit.