A Sit Down with Dr. Javier Ávila

I recall him building my backhand first and foremost, saying, “most players will have a weak backhand and we don’t want you to have a weak wing,” so I would say I hit 80% backhands when I was a child. 

He taught me about being comfortable with being “bored” on the court, and he meant being consistent. He said my greatest quality could be my strength and my weakness, which is, I am creative. On the tennis court it can be a weakness because I know the shot I should hit, but I go for some kind of impossible shot because it gives me a lot of joy. 

Editor’s note: Ávila’s dad passed away 28 years ago and never got to see him play USTA events, which he says would have been fun.

How did your son, Oscar, get into tennis?

I didn’t want to push him. That is one of the things I didn’t want to do, so there are two periods of Oscar’s tennis life. There was one when he was very young, like 3 or 4, I got him into it. We didn’t know what to do with him because he wanted to hit ambidextrously, but I followed my father’s philosophy and I taught him the backhand first. He ended up being a lefty!

Two or three years went by and he didn’t play much, but when he turned 9, he started to show some interest when he would see me go out to play. He would ask, “Daddy, can we go out and play,” so we would go out around 7 a.m. and then later in the evening he would ask to play again.

As you know, it is Hispanic Heritage Month. How do you feel your culture has shaped you as a tennis player, parent, professor, etc.?

Well, if I can see a metaphor of tennis and the contributions of Hispanic people in the U.S., I would say that tennis is a sport that requires perseverance, and requires understanding that the process is more important than the result, and sometimes that is where we are as a population. We struggle to find our place, but we are perseverant, hard working people and they keep at it and don’t get discouraged. I think they bring a lot of richness to this great nation.