Matthew Ridge

Tennis especially was quite racist.

You know, like if you're a good tennis player and you were dark, it didn't matter.

And especially if you had a – I was really volatile, right?

So if things weren't going my way, I'd express it and I'd be loud and I'd be, you know, I'd be –

I'd have a go at myself and I'd have a go at somebody else or whatever.

But nobody ever showed me how to channel my energy, you know.

So rather than the people taking me aside, you know, the powers that be and go, hey, this guy's got a bit of talent, you know, like we just need to channel him, you know, like.

Roger Federer was an absolute shocker when he was young, like smashing his bats and all the bullshit.

But then somebody just got a hold of him and said, hey, come on.

But nobody did that for guys like me.

All we did was we just kept getting scolded.

Not like, hey, you're actually really good.

Have you thought about doing it this way?

What do we think about doing this?

So I think the mental hardness came from

just kind of having to battle away on my own, you know.

Not that I didn't have a family unit, I did.

But, you know, I had my grandparents who were two generations, was it two or three generations, I don't know, but they're a lot older than me.

My grandmother, my mum was obviously, you know, like she was doing her thing.

Mum was, you know, 19 when she had me, so she was just a young lady finding her way, you know, like, and then, you know, and the gay scene and all that sort of stuff and having to work at restaurants at night.