March 24, 2026
How Do You Recover After the Breaking Point? Alex Kuperstein Explains
What happens when you can keep up with the best players in the world, but pressure still gets the best of you?
Pro tennis player Alex Kuperstein opens up about the mental side of elite sport and why the toughest opponent is often your own mind. From training alongside players like Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner to facing burnout and self-doubt, Alex shares what it really takes to compete when expectations and identity are tied to performance.
🧠 What you will learn:
- How top players stay mentally clear during high pressure moments
- Why tying your identity only to sport can lead to burnout and anxiety
- How music and DJing helped Alex reconnect with creativity and joy
- Simple mental performance tools like breathing routines, visualization, journaling, and the 16 second cure between points
🔑 Key takeaways:
- Mental strength often matters more than talent in pressure moments
- Stepping away can help you rediscover the passion that brought you in
- Mentorship and strong support systems can change an athlete’s path
Listen now to Alex Kuperstein’s story about pressure, burnout, and finding your way back to the game.
Watch on YouTube or subscribe to YoggNation’s Spirit of Gratitude podcast for more conversations on mindset, resilience, and growth through sport and life.
00:00 - Welcome And Guest Setup
01:59 - What Separates The Tennis Elite
05:38 - Losing Identity Through Burnout
10:56 - Music As Freedom From Pressure
13:32 - Mentorship That Sparked A Return
20:20 - Parents Expectations And Performance Anxiety
24:51 - The 16-Second Reset Routine
28:55 - Joyful Mindset And Big Goals
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Yog Nation, the Spread of Gratitude Podcast on the OneTech platform.
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Hello, friends, my name is Yogesh Patel, and this podcast explores the themes of bullying, self-awareness, and the power of our inner spirit, including the silent battles we all face.
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Join me every week as I invite high-profile guests as we explore how adversity shapes us, how gratitude lifts us, and how we can all uncover the inner strength that we all have within ourselves.
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Join the conversation.
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I appreciate you listening in.
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Now, citizens, what happens when a player talented enough to share the court with Novak Djokovic and Yanek Sinner loses his love for the game before his journey has even begun?
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I am so excited for my next guest, professional tennis player Alex Kupperstein.
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Before rediscovering his passion, Alex hit a breaking point with burnout pressure and the weight of expectations.
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He stepped away from a full scholarship to the University of Arizona and had to face the deeper question of who he was beyond tennis.
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But through coaching and learning under Taylor Fritz's father, Alex slowly found his way back to the sport with a renewed sense of purpose.
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This is a powerful conversation around burnout, resilience, self-awareness, and what it really takes to rebuild from within.
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With gratitude, welcome to the podcast, Alex.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I am very excited to be here.
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Um I have a great story to tell, so I'm really excited to share with the world.
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And I hope this message can get across to uh many young, talented tennis players and whoever, besides athletes that want a good story about burnout, I think this is a great one.
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Exactly.
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And you know, to echo that point, you're giving voice to those thousands of young athletes who silently struggle with burnout and uh and pressure.
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So appreciate you having you on.
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Yeah, no problem.
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This is this is fun.
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Well, speaking of fun, you shared the court with current tennis greats such as Djokovic Center, I believe you hit with Alcarez.
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What makes them so hard to beat in terms of is it their fitness, defense, mental toughness, artistry on the court, or is it something else where you're they're playing against themselves?
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Yeah, it's a great question.
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Well, first of all, um everything you just mentioned, they're good at all of that times 10.
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So it is having a bit of a full package for sure.
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It really comes down to physical, uh, technical, strategical, emotional, and probably the most important is mental.
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Um without the mental, there is just no way these guys can perform at the way, at the level that they are playing at currently.
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And yes, anyone inside the top 200, even top 100, even myself, who's ranked 900 in the world, we all can hit with the greats like Djokovic, Sin or Alcaraz.
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I've been honored to share the core with them.
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And to be fair to myself, I felt like I've kept up and I've been able to hang with them.
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But that's just practice.
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When it gets into the tournaments and into the pressure moments, that's where they shine the most.
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That's when their mental really um depicts depicts from them.
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You know, they they separate themselves even from guys that are top 20, top 30.
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They that is the biggest difference maker in my mind to why they are in the top five.
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Well, I think we just saw that this weekend at the BNP Parabah final where Center beat Medvedev 7-6-7-6.
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Just a few points here and there separated victory versus defeat.
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Yeah, I mean, it's even in the second set tiebreaker, I believe Center was down 4-0 and only in a couple points away from losing that set.
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But the difference was Cinner went into lockdown mode.
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He really locked in and stayed focused and leveled up his game in the most important moment in the match.
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But like you said, it is only in a couple points in a match.
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And to have that belief and confidence in those pressure moments is really astonishing.
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Yeah, that's crazy.
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That's crazy.
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I mean, and just kind of a sidebar question.
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I mean, when you're rallying with these greats, right, do you ever think I hit a great shot and then they come back and somehow get it back and return it?
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For sure.
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I mean, when we're just rallying and and practicing, uh, it's a little bit more controlled.
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So uh we're not moving around as much, but when I do play points with them, that's when the difference really is shown.
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So I was uh practicing with Yannick Center all week.
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And in the before the tournament started, we he wanted to play a lot more points uh just to get his conditioning and everything a little bit more fine-tuned.
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And that's when I was really blown away.
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I mean, the the precision and the the amount of time he takes away from you, uh it it is I've never seen a player do that before.
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Um you're pretty much running on every single shot.
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There was times where I hit some really quality balls.
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I mean, guys that I'm playing now, I'm winning those points 100%.
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But not only is he getting there, he's putting it back into a corner where you have to run.
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And it's just it's just incredible what what these players can do off of defense.
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Yeah, it's I can't imagine now other than just pure relentlessness to to to grab uh any point.
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And uh yeah, it's just incredible.
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I love that's why I love watching the sport, that's why I love playing the sport.
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Um so Alex, take us back.
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Um your whole identity from the age of five was all tennis.
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And what happened to you mentally when uh or what happens to you mentally when you suddenly step away from it?
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Yeah, well, when all you know is tennis since an early age, um that that's all you know.
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And for me, tennis was in my bones since I I didn't know anything else but tennis.
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Yes, of course I had side hobbies and I had other things that I love to do, but for me, tennis was always my my priority.
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And when there was a moment where I didn't have tennis, my whole identity, you know, was challenged.
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I really didn't understand what what this feeling was when I didn't have tennis.
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And to work through those feelings were were very, very life-changing for me.
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And um So why were you why were you burned out to begin with?
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Or how were you burned out to begin with?
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So there was so much expectations growing up as a as a child, coming from uh a son of a father who was a professional tennis player.
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So my father, he got up to about 300, 400 in the world, singles and doubles.
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And yeah, he was a great player.
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And to live under those expectations was a little tricky at times.
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Um I had, I wouldn't say that I had a lot of talent when I was younger, and I was able to do things that not a lot of kids were doing at a young age, and I had certain abilities with my skills that really set me apart from a lot of players.
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But with that being said, there were there was a lot of expectations to always perform and always win matches.
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And even when I got into high school, there were pressures of trying to commit to a college and what whether I wanted to go pro or whether I wanted to go college, my school was also suffering at the time.
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So and there was just a lot of different types of uh pressure coming from the outside world.
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Well, if you could talk to this 18-year-old version of yourself who was burned out, what would you tell him now?
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Yeah, you know, I I would tell him now to first of all take a few deep breaths because it's gonna be okay.
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Looking looking what I know now to what I knew then is my my whole perspective on the sport has changed.
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Um definitely what I would say to my 18-year-old self is take breaks.
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Take breaks when you when you feel like you're not having fun.
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Because there were moments where I was not enjoying myself on the court and I kept pushing myself because there was no such thing as taking a break when I was in high school.
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It was always tournament after tournament after tournament and training nonstop.
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I was in school, so I didn't have the full, you know, five, six hours a day schedule, but I still was practicing every single day.
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And hardly did I ever take any time off.
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So definitely I would say there are moments when when you need to step away and and do something nice and fun for yourself.
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Well, I think this applies again, not only to the athletes out there that are listening to this podcast, but anyone who feels that sense of burnout due to the weight of expectations from perhaps their parents or from the environment or just that escape velocity.
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I think you certainly are that example, Alex, of first of all acknowledging and becoming self-aware of the burnout, then taking steps, as you mentioned, to take those breaks to reassess and to rediscover who you are.
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So I was very, very curious to find out.
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Um in this time that you felt burnout, were you grateful for anything?
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I mean, did you understand that process of burnout and how to reclaim yourself?
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Wow, in the moment, um I would say I would say no.
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I was very lost in the moment.
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Um it there was so much um defeat inside of me that the only thing that I felt was right in that moment was to quit.
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It it got to a point where I didn't, I wasn't even thinking about just stepping away from the sport.
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I was thinking about full-on quitting the sport and not looking back.
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And you do that?
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I mean, this is I didn't it would be such a hard divorce, right?
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Because this is part of your part of who you are.
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Yes, and not only that, it was a when I decided to to quote unquote quit, this was a very, very, very tough moment for my parents as well.
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I mean, for them, it was like a breakup because they invested their whole life and their whole all their money into me becoming a tennis player and to going to a college, a university, a division one school, and potentially going pro.
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So for them to hear me saying that I'm quitting was a heartbreak.
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And it was a heartbreak for myself too, for sure.
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But I really did feel like I did the right thing.
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And because that's all that's and that's where music and becoming a DJ entered your life.
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Yes, exactly.
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So simultaneously, when when this was going on, there were um moments even before this where I got really interested in in music and DJs.
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I I'm from Palm Springs, California, so we had Coachella Music Festival in my backyard, and I went there six years in a row, and I got a lot of inspiration from the festival, and I got so inspired by the whole music scene that I decided to start look like taking interest in DJing, and that's when I actually started learning.
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So, shortly after um I I quit tennis, I started DJing.
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I started learning.
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It took me about a month to like feel comfortable, and I ended up doing my first first gig.
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And I'll never forget that gig.
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I we our it was my friend's birthday, and he rented out a house, and I had speakers that I rented from Guitar Center.
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I had my DJ board, and we just set up in the backyard and I started playing.
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Of course, I knew a lot of people from high school at the time, and we had a big following just because we knew a bunch of people, the desert's small.
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And I'll never forget seeing people showing up and dancing to my music that I was playing.
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And I just, there was just something I just knew how to work the crowd.
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I I knew how to play the music and flow into the whole night.
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And it was such a cool experience to see people dancing.
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So, what did music give you that tennis couldn't at the time?
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Well, at the time, it gave me freedom, it gave me liberation, it gave me joy and happiness and creativity, and all of this, of course, can be in tennis, but in in that moment of my life, music was giving me that feeling.
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And it was the first time I didn't feel like I was competing against someone or competing with myself or competing with the my parents, the schools.
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It was just pure let's have fun.
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I think that's the way that life should be operated.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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I mean, there's these self-pressures that we put on ourselves, you know, being our internal own, our own worst enemy, so to speak.
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And that's where, again, I referenced the question to begin with.
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Are they playing with these four qualities or are they really playing against themselves?
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Because that takes uh you know, it does take a toll if you weigh that in all the time.
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Yeah.
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And how did meeting Guy Fritz, again, Taylor Fritz's father, and playing at the College of the Desert, change your trajectory from like loving what you do with music, yet rediscovering your passion as a tennis player?
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Yeah, so I've known uh Guy and Taylor for most of my tennis career.
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Um, I actually played Taylor Fritz twice in juniors.
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Uh, the first time I lost uh 0 and 0, I didn't win a game.
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But we were pretty young, and the second time I lost uh five and two, so a little more competitive the second time around.
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But so I've known them a long time.
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And during this time of when I was DJing and even producing music, um, Guy Fritz moved to the desert, and he took the job at my local academy that I was training at.
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And he also took the job as the head coach of College of the Desert.
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Um, so having him there in um in the desert was very interesting.
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And I knew what he was gonna do.
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I knew he was gonna try and recruit me and try to play for his team.
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But during this time, I was still really had no interest in going back to tennis at all.
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Um, I was really set on continuing my DJ career and becoming a headline DJ at Coachella.
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That was that was my vision at the time.
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So um it definitely took a lot of uh convincing from Mr.
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Guy to get me on the team.
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And finally, after maybe the third, fourth time, it finally got to me and I said, you know what?
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I've been coaching tennis for the past nine months.
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I kind of have a little bit of a different mindset towards the sport, and I was like, okay, let's give it a shot.
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So so he had me play.
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Sorry, uh, as you were DJing, you slowly became a tennis coach.
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Correct.
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So so simultaneously when I was DJing, I was coaching tennis at my academy because I needed to make I needed to make money.
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So I couldn't just rely on house parties to to make money for me.
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My mom was like, you gotta pay rent, dude.
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So I that's when I actually started coaching.
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And yeah, so so guy came and he started coaching at the same academy as me, and I was also coaching there as well.
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Okay, very cool.
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Was there anything that he specifically said to you that made that made the light bulbs go off again?
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First, the first thing I'll never forget, and you know, he does this out of care because he does care, but he said, Alex, you're a waste of talent.
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That was pretty harsh, not gonna lie.
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But you know, he he said it because he really meant it.
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He really felt that I was such a talented player and that it was a shame to not see me playing tennis anymore.
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Of course, maybe he could have said it differently, but also he had a um he had a really good connection for me in the Hamptons in the summer, and uh he he suggested that you know I should go there in the summer, but he really wanted me to play for him the during the season.
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So I said, you know what, I'll give it a shot.
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The Hamptons sounds fun.
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I can continue my DJing there, I can coach, I can make a lot of money, sounds great.
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Wow, and the rest, as I say, is history.
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The rest is history for sure, but that season definitely uh changed my life.
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Um so there's something about playing on a team that hits a little bit differently than playing individually for yourself.
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When you're playing on a team, because I played team sports when I was young, I played basketball, football, soccer, baseball, really good baseball player.
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Um I shined on a team.
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I loved being on a team because I wasn't playing for myself.
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I was playing for my boys.
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And there's something about playing on a team that takes you out of, you know, playing just for yourself and playing for something greater than yourself.
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And being on that team for COD was the most such an impactful season.
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I had such a good time.
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I made such great friends, friends that I have until this day.
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And overall, just uh it was just a bonding moment for me.
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And that really helped me find my love back for the sport again.
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But how do you go back from that transition of being on a team versus being a selfish SOB on the court to win, right?
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That uh that need to win.
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That I mean that Right.
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You know, that that is complicated, and sometimes I still am working through that to this day.
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Um, I've had a few great singles wins lately, and I've had a couple tough singles losses as well.
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And I recently actually just won a doubles tournament um in Costa Rica.
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It was a 25k um ITF.
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It was my first 25k doubles win.
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I've won two 15k doubles before that, but the whole week I was just having so much fun with my partner.
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I lost first round of singles that tournament, and I was, you know, having just a tough time in singles.
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I wasn't really fully enjoying myself on the court.
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I had some moments where I was and some moments where I wasn't.
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But in doubles, the whole week, I was just loving it.
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I was so energetic.
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My having a really good teammate also made a big difference.
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We both were in sync.
00:18:45.519 --> 00:18:47.359
We both were sharing funny moments.
00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:50.559
We were laughing on the court, we were able to talk to each other.
00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:55.279
So sometimes, yeah, just being in that team environment brings it out of you.
00:18:55.440 --> 00:19:00.400
Um, I I it is important to try to find that for yourself, even when you're competing individually.
00:19:00.559 --> 00:19:01.039
I agree.
00:19:01.279 --> 00:19:07.519
Yeah, I'm just, I mean, golf analogy, you've got Tiger Woods in the Ryder Cup versus his singles matches.
00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:09.839
There's no there's no comparison.
00:19:11.519 --> 00:19:12.720
No, for sure.
00:19:12.960 --> 00:19:20.880
Um I think you know, another thing I'd say is having a team, you know, traveling with you helps a bit.
00:19:21.119 --> 00:19:27.200
Now I'm not always fortunate to bring my coach or bring another, you know, member of your my team with me.
00:19:27.279 --> 00:19:28.880
So that sometimes can be a little tricky.
00:19:28.960 --> 00:19:33.920
But when I do have a coach, now they've recently added coaching to tennis.
00:19:34.160 --> 00:19:48.559
Um, there was before no coaching allowed, but now that there's coaching, I think that helps being able to express myself to someone versus just bottling up all the uh energy inside and not releasing it anywhere.
00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:51.759
So I think having well don't you want to release that on the tennis ball?
00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:52.400
What's that?
00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:54.160
Don't you want to release that on the tennis ball?
00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:54.880
Sure, yeah.
00:19:55.119 --> 00:20:01.279
Sometimes sometimes I would love to, but uh it's not always easy to just release energy.
00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:06.400
I think I think Novak um does it by smashing a racket, honestly.
00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:07.599
Oh yeah, yeah.
00:20:07.680 --> 00:20:13.039
And we saw Taylor Fritz uh turn his racket from horizontal to 90 degrees.
00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:15.759
So I hard to do by the way.
00:20:15.839 --> 00:20:20.720
I mean, those things are rock solid in terms of the way that their rackets are created.
00:20:20.880 --> 00:20:33.680
But Alex, walk me through the experience, what it was like with your parents, and not necessarily your parents in general, specifically, but what is an advice for the parents that are do listening to this podcast?
00:20:33.839 --> 00:20:37.519
Because the demographics are folks in the 30s and 40s and 50s, right?
00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:38.799
They want the best for their kids.
00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:55.759
And perhaps those expectations aren't necessarily so self-centered as it is to perhaps push their child to become better than uh the parent, just because, in terms of whether it's security or or growth or something like that.
00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:02.400
So, what would be a valuable advice that you can tell parents as you've gone through this struggle?
00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:05.039
And I don't think that you rebelled going to music.
00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:08.640
I just think that music was one of the things that helped rediscover you.
00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:18.240
But in terms of those parents that have those lofty goals and dreams for their child when the child may not realize that, what would you share to them?
00:21:18.559 --> 00:21:20.000
Yeah, this is a great question.
00:21:20.079 --> 00:21:27.359
And I think this is one of the most important questions for child development and putting them on the right path.
00:21:27.599 --> 00:21:32.559
Um, so I'll give you a little bit about my personal situation.
00:21:32.799 --> 00:21:39.359
So my my mom was the one who pushed me the most, and my father was the one who actually stayed more away from it.
00:21:39.599 --> 00:21:47.599
Even though my dad was the professional, he really wasn't as involved as my mom was, who she was an unbelievable athlete as well.
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