Robert Cash: I was ready for medical school, but one point changed everything
Doubles player Robert Cash pens a My Point essay to take fans inside his decision to put off medical school and becoming an orthopaedic surgeon to compete on the ATP Tour.
August 11, 2025
Andrew Eichenholz/ATP Tour
Robert Cash has transitioned from medical school applications to life as a professional tennis player.
By Robert Cash
I was on the path to becoming an orthopaedic surgeon until one point changed my life.
Today I am a 24-year-old professional tennis player, but to understand my journey I’d like to take you back to my youth. Growing up, I was one of the few highly ranked junior tennis players my age who went to public school and I never played one ITF junior tournament my entire life. I could not afford to miss that much school!
In my family, education always came first. My father, Charles, is an engineer, and my mother, Cathie, is a podiatrist. I have two siblings, both of whom are becoming doctors. My brother C.J., four years older, is in the middle of his residency, while my sister, Alex, two years older, is in medical school.
Ever since I can remember, I looked up to them. C.J. and Alex both played college tennis and pursued a medical career, and I wanted to be like them every step of the way.
I went through my fair share of injuries in high school and college. I had surgery on my hand when I was young after breaking my thumb and the scar will probably be with me for the rest of my life. I had a stress fracture in my kneecap and had bad patella tendinitis and fat pad inflammation. That was difficult to deal with for two years in college and I also was a late grower, which caused a lot of lower back pain.
Orthopaedics always interested me because of how many athletes go through some sort of injury, and I saw a lot of surgeons for my knee. I wanted to be hands on and help people, so it seemed like a natural fit.
My top priority going through college at Ohio State University was to put school first, tennis second. When there were breaks and my teammates would go to individual tournaments, extra training or social events, I was fully focused on my application and studying. I majored in chemistry and completed minors in psychology and epidemiology, so I had a lot of schoolwork constantly. It took all my effort and all my discipline to really prioritise both and try to put 100 per cent into school and tennis.
My biggest dream was to then go to medical school to become a surgeon. You have to go to medical school for four years, work a residency for another few years and then can take a fellowship if you choose to. That’s a lot of school!
I had a plan: I would take a gap year to improve my resume and application, and I was going to work in a research lab or at a hospital to further my skills. Professional tennis was the furthest thing from my mind.
If anything, winning the NCAA Championship was my tennis dream. When you win the tournament, your name goes in the history books, and I wanted it so badly.
JJ Tracy and I were in the semi-finals of the NCAA Doubles Championship against Louisville’s Etienne Donnet and Natan Rodrigues. They led 9/7 in the third-set tie-break, giving them two match points to reach the final and send us home, and me to medical school applications. They had amazing opportunities to close us out on those points, but we somehow found a way through and eventually the tournament.
Even at that moment, it did not really hit me. We received a wild card into the tournament in Newport just a few days before the event, and I don’t believe I hit a ball that entire week. I was still outside the Top 500 in the PIF ATP Doubles Rankings and my focus was on best positioning myself for medical school.
Then JJ and I made the final in Newport, our first ATP Tour event. We won three ATP Challenger Tour events later in the season and also reached the second round of the US Open, where we earned a wild card from our NCAA victory. I knew it would take some time, but I realised we could compete with everyone in the world.
By the end of the year, I started fizzling out a little bit on the applications and took a step back and thought about where I was. This is really the only time I can play professional tennis — it is now or never. I can’t come back in 10 years and try to play tennis again — it would be extremely difficult.
But what I can do is play tennis and hopefully go to medical school later on, or do something else with my life academically that I probably can’t do physically. That is why at the start of this year I decided to put the medical school journey on the back burner for now and play tennis and see where this can take me. It was time to go all in on tennis.
JJ Tracy and Robert Cash earned their first ATP Tour doubles together last month in Los Cabos.” style=”width:100%;” src=”https://www.atptour.com/-/media/images/news/2025/08/10/22/10/tracy-cash-los-cabos-2025-my-point.jpg”>
Tracy and Cash (right) won their first ATP Tour title in July 2025 in Los Cabos. Photo: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images.
After a certain number of years your MCAT result expires and you need to retake the exam, which I spent so many hundreds — if not thousands — of hours preparing for. But I try not to worry about that and if I continue playing tennis and need to retake it when I get a bit older, I’ll figure that out then.
Medicine is still my passion. But ideally, I will play tennis for a few years and reach my potential without giving myself goals that are too firm, because that’s a lot of pressure. It would be a dream to win a Grand Slam, play in the Olympics for the United States and reach the Top 10 in the world. I just reached a career-high No. 62, so I’ve been able to climb pretty quickly.
It’s crazy to look back and think how close I was to my life turning out completely differently. One point changed my life for sure.
Medical school could come in a year or two, or it could be five or 10 years. Ultimately, I just want to continue to grow, and I see this as another opportunity.
I embrace challenges, and learn from all my failures, so this will be no different. I will stay ready and prepared for whatever life throws at me.
– As told to Andrew Eichenholz.
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