The Pull Towards Play is a series of short portraits of real tennis players from around the world. Not professionals. Just people who keep showing up, for reasons that are hard to name and impossible to ignore.
DIEGO, SAO PAULO
He was seven years old.
His parents were watching from the sidelines. He was about to play his first championship match and the only thing he could think about was not disappointing them.
He lost. Forty years later, he still remembers it.
Diego Jimenez is half Spanish, half Brazilian, based in São Paulo. He leads partnerships for Racquet Magazine across Latin America and runs his own sports marketing agency. His professional life is built entirely around tennis. But before any of that, there was a boy on a court worrying about the wrong thing.
Tennis found him at seven, at the country club where his parents were members. It was never the only sport. Football, handball, judo, swimming, basketball. He played everything. He came close to going professional in rugby.
Then came the injury.
An open fracture of the right ankle. A bone puncturing through the sock. His rugby career ended in that moment. It was a year before he could return to sport. He chose swimming first, afraid of what might happen to his ankle on a court. Slowly, carefully, he made his way back. Tennis was the first court sport he returned to.
Tennis was still there.
Of everything he has played, tennis is the one he kept returning to. Through the rugby years, after the injury, and eventually into a career built around the sport.
That last part is complicated.
He tells candidates who interview with him and say they want to work in sport because they love it: be careful with that. It can be the biggest heartbreak of your life.
He means it. Working inside sport changes the way you see it, especially when money is involved. The thing you loved becomes something else. The uncomplicated joy of simply playing becomes harder to find.
He finds it anyway. Every day.
“Playing tennis is my meditation.”
On court it is automatic. He likes playing people he has never played before. They surprise him, hitting shots his regular partners would never attempt. After forty years he still finds something unexpected in a stranger across the net. He stays for the beers and the conversation afterwards. That, he says, is the best part of a tennis day.
He has seen tennis from almost every angle. A seven-year-old losing his first match. The 2023 US Open final from court side. The biggest stage the sport has.
The court feels the same in all of them. Once play begins, titles disappear. Everyone starts at love all.
Tennis was still there.
It still is.