Taylor Dent

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You know what I'm saying? The lowercase N.

One thing I really learned from, from Taylor Dent, that there are no rules in tennis.

There's no like, this works 100% of the time.

Do that, only that.

So one thing, like, Medvedev kept on, like, ch- he, he bought, like, a second racket.

He, he was Taylor Dent-ing it up.

Taylor Dent used to do this, right?

Yeah.

I gotta ask you about 1997, I go to scout a junior match at the US Open.

Everybody says, "You gotta see this kid, Taylor Dent." And there's about 30 agents there, everybody's talking about Taylor Dent, and I was thinking this whole time, "God, who is this Hewitt kid?"

[laughs]

That you thumped him first round.

I played a challenger in Perth and lost in the second round.

And then I was planning on playing qualifying in Adelaide for that 250 event there in January, and then one of the big names didn't end up coming, so the night that they were doing the qualies draw, they had one wildcard left.

And, and Colin Stubbs, who was the tournament director at the time, he made the tough choice and he actually went with the, the young local kid and give him a shot out there.

You know, for me it was a dream.

He was 18 years old and stopped when he was right around 100.

And then Taylor Dent, Sebastian Grosjean.

And then I went back to the USTA, actually worked for the USTA in Florida for a little while.

And then Kevin Anderson and Tommy Paul.

When Memphis had a tournament, there was one year where there was no people, not only from Memphis, not from Tennessee, there was no one from America in a tournament that is in America.

When I was the tournament director in Las Vegas, I really wanted Taylor Dent to play, and he was unfortunately playing in the same week in a tournament in Germany.

And I was willing to build, 'cause I wanted to do a big plan of having athletes come for five years.

I wanted to build a giant Taylor Dent thing that was 50 feet tall.

Every year we'd bring it out and, and make him famous there and, and build a following.

The tournament in Germany, uh, wanted Philipp Kohlschreiber, and he was playing in my draw.

And so Philipp Kohlschreiber didn't sell one single ticket to my Las Vegas tournament, and Taylor Dent didn't sell one single ticket to his German event.

But it-- Had they switched, it would've been great.