Willis almost left the sport a few months before he played 20-time major champion Federer. He did quit in 2018 due to injuries and the toll they were taking on his mental health.<\/p>\n
In 2020, he worked for his cousin’s bricklaying business to earn money during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
“That was nice, it was freeing. Some of the conversations are interesting,” Willis recalled.<\/p>\n
“What I loved about it was how whenever the clock hits 12pm or 12:30pm, you’re stopping for a tea and your lunch. It’s religious. They stop on the dot.<\/p>\n
“It was an incredible experience. But you wouldn’t want me trying to build your house, let’s put it that way. I was just trying to earn some money and spend time with my cousin.”<\/p>\n
A couple of years later, Willis was back on the court. He was playing exhibition events when a family friend offered to finance a professional comeback.<\/p>\n
“People say ‘you’re still good’, but you know the reality of becoming a player,” Willis said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just being good. It’s having the money, it’s staying injury-free, it’s travelling the world, not seeing your kids grow up properly. That’s what people don’t understand sometimes.<\/p>\n
“I hadn’t thought about it. I went home and saw my wife [Jenny] \u2013 she was more keen than I was at the time. <\/p>\n
“She said go and do it, you get one chance. And now here I am.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willis almost left the sport a few months before he played 20-time major champion Federer. He did quit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-771631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}