By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
At almost every professional tennis tournament you will see video and photographs of players participating in a kids tennis clinic and teaching them improve their game. This is great because it inspires kids to continue to pursue tennis as a lifelong activity that will make them have healthier lifestyles.
However at the 2024 Miami Open, Chris Eubanks did something different for kids that is a lot more important to the lives of young people. As part of his sponsorship with FICO, Eubanks not only hit tennis balls with students at Miami Beach Nautilus Middle School, but spoke to them about financial responsibility.
“I’m excited to partner with FICO to not only raise awareness about the need for financial education but also learn more about it myself,” said Eubanks in the press release discussing the partnership. “I was lucky that I learned the financial basics from a pretty young age from a family member and mentor. It’s something that is extremely important to me and to be able to partner with a company like FICO is my way of paying it forward.”
In speaking with assembled kids at the school (as you can see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhJslntA6vg&t=4s), Eubanks talked about the importance of paying off debt and increasing credit scores that will allow for a better financial future. He showed and explained the difference between two examples of people with good credit and a history of successfully and timely paying off debt and those with bad credit who miss payments on credit cards and other bills and how this affects the chances of getting more loans and more credit and how it will affect the interest rate you will get on future loans. Eubanks even admitted that in his first months of having his own credit card, he would only pay and minimum amount due, causing for him to fall into deeper debt and hurt his credit rating. A person’s credit rating is measured via the FICO® Score, which is used by 90% of top U.S. lenders who extend credit for personal loans, mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and more. So, as Eubanks explained to the students, if they start to have a bad track record of paying off debt, it could severely affect their future livelihood. And that is why it is so important for people to know their FICO Score and what impacts it.
“Chris is a performance-oriented athlete and an inspiration to many. He is someone who deeply understands the importance of financial literacy and has seen the benefits firsthand on his own financial journey,” said Nikhil Behl, chief marketing officer at FICO in the press release on the event. “We hope Chris inspires more people to understand the importance of money and credit education and help them on their financial journey.”
In a strange way, Eubanks perhaps gained the attention of the students more than if an older financial advisor spoke to them about financial literacy at this age because Eubanks is a professional athlete, and one with a presence being six-foot-seven inches tall, and also because he is at a closer age at only 27 years old. This, of course, will change when the students get older and more mature and pay more attention to their finances when they become financially independent.
Coincidentally, it was exactly one year ago at the Miami Open in 2023 when the Eubanks career began to turn around. He had been a pro for over five years and his ranking stood at No. 119 and he began to look at what else he could do for a living besides professional tennis, namely dabbling in television commentary. However, Eubanks had a run through the Miami Open’s qualifying rounds and all the way to the quarterfinals that caused him to break into the top 100 of the ATP rankings for the first time in his career. He rode the wave of confidence from the Miami Open to win his first career singles title at the grass-court Mallorca Open in Spain and then used that as a springboard to reach the quarterfinals of Wimbledon, catapulting him into stardom in the tennis world. His new-found popularity created many more money-making opportunities, including the relationship with FICO, that started as a patch program with him last year at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, introduced to him and IMG, his agency, via Leverage Agency which was working on behalf of FICO.
For more information on Eubanks, follow him on Instagram and Twitter at Chris_Eubanks96. For more information on FICO, go to www.Fico.com
