By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
The Chris Eubanks run to the Wimbledon quarterfinals was something special.
For a variety of reasons, this run of success by an American tennis player at a Grand Slam tournament garnered more attention than usual. If you spend a minute to see Eubanks speak or do an interview, you get the immediate feeling of likeability. He has a great smile, is humble, positive and funny. It’s this, and his excellent match analysis, that made him a popular broadcaster on Tennis Channel earlier this year, when he was testing the waters of a new career as his tennis career seemed stuck in neutral just outside of the Top 100 of the ATP rankings.
I know that some of the content that I was posting on my @TennisPublisher Twitter feed at Wimbledon this year was getting hundreds of thousands of views. They were some of the most viral tweets I have ever posted on the platform. When I would look at the people who would comment on my posts, their bios stated nothing about being a tennis fan or anything. They were just average people who perhaps paid a little more attention to tennis because it is “Wimbledon” – not unlike when other salient sports events come up that attract the non-sports fan like the Super Bowl, The Masters and The Kentucky Derby.
“There’s just an aura about it,” Eubanks said of Wimbledon to ESPN the day after his five-set quarterfinal loss to Medvedev. “There’s certain sporting events or sporting venues that I think even if you don’t know much about the sport, you know about it. Whether it’s Dodger Stadium, whether it’s Yankee Stadium, whether it’s Augusta in golf. There’s certain places that just has this aura of something just being historic and very special. And I think Wimbledon has that. And I think people who don’t even follow tennis that much. I’ve been telling people for years, oh, I played professional tennis. Oh, you ever played Wimbledon? Yeah, I played Wimbledon. I’m trying to help. But they know it, they’ve seen it. Even if they’ve never really sat down and watched an entire match. They’ve come across and they know the name. It’s so iconic.”
Eubanks continued, “And I think that’s where the aura of Wimbledon just kind of takes over and it makes you say, man, if you could have a run at Wimbledon, that’s special. That is, I mean, I’d be honored to have a run at any of the Grand Slams obviously. But there’s just something different, I think, about Wimbledon. The history, the crowds, the strawberries and cream, everything. So many things about it that just makes it, sets it apart. And I think that’s probably what I’m talking about when I say Wimbledon. It’s just so special.”
The most important win for Eubanks certainly came in the fourth round, where he registered his first top 10 win of his career over former Australian and French Open runner-up Stefanos Tsitsipas in five sets. The win came on what would have been the 80th birthday of Arthur Ashe, the first black man to win a major title and the man who Eubanks was cast as in the Rex Miller documentary movie “Ashe 1968.” Eubanks became only the third African-American man to reach the quarterfinals of Wimbledon, joining Ashe and 1996 runner-up Mal Washington. Althea Gibson was the first black player to compete and Wimbledon in the 1950s, winning back to back titles in 1957 and 1958.
The Eubanks win over Tsitsiapas qualified him to be a member of Wimbledon’s “Final 8 Club,” which recognizes the achievements of players who reach the quarterfinals of singles, the semifinals of doubles and finals of the mixed doubles tournament at Wimbledon and are accorded with credentials and privileges, including tickets to the event, for the rest of their lives. My tweet about this accomplishment – and it’s perks – achieved over 600,000 views, which is about the number of people watching the ESPN coverage in the United States.
Said Eubanks to ESPN of his new “Final 8” status, Chris Eubanks: “It’s going to be something I’m going to use. I can guarantee you that”.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Eubanks became a college tennis star at Georgia Tech. I first became aware of him in 2017 during the NCAA Tennis Championships in Athens, Georgia when he reached the quarterfinals and Atlanta resident Patricia Jensen, the mother of Luke and Murphy Jensen, was according me with stories about what a tremendous young man he was. So, I became a fan and always kept an eye on him as he toiled in the minor leagues of tennis on the Futures and Challenger circuit. It’s a good thing that after this Wimbledon run that there will be a lot more eyes on Eubanks as he continues to battle on the tennis courts of pro tennis and, after he eventually retires, analyzes matches as a TV commentator.
