Marcus Daniell hopes to use his platform to provide high-impact charities with more resources. Photo / Photosport
For most professional sportspeople, the journey after retirement is an uncertain one.
The crossroads, the question of “what’s next?”; the search to find something to fill the vacuum. That’s not the case for Kiwi tennis veteran Marcus Daniell, who will bow out at the end of the 2025 ASB Classic.
He has his organisation, High Impact Athletes, a massive success since he launched in 2020. The initiative, inspired by the effective altruism movement, sees sportspeople support specific charities – often by pledging a percentage of their earnings – and has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Daniell has attracted more than 200 athletes, including some big names like Greek tennis star Stefanos Tsitsipas, and there are more “very close” more in the pipeline. He is also working on a partnership with a global company which could be “massive”.
It’s an exciting time, which is why Daniell is happy to step away after 17 years of chasing a tennis dream. The realisation time was up came last April, a few months into his comeback after a long hiatus, mainly due to a serious knee injury.
Aside from the rehabilitation process, he had enjoyed the time off living “a normal life” in New Zealand, but was looking forward to being back on court.
”I thought I’d be around the atmosphere, around people who could really challenge me, and I’d feel the fire again,” said the 35-year-old. “While I really enjoyed the competition, I realized more starkly than I ever had the amount of yourself that you have to give to be competitive week to week, year to year.
“It’s immense, and I didn’t feel like the sacrifice was worth it anymore.”
2024 was also a “terrible” season. Using a protected ranking, he played 15 tournaments with a different partner for all but one of them, unable to build any cohesion or chemistry.
He also endured a brutal initial run of results, with eight consecutive first-round exits, most of them with match points or extremely tight.
”That [scenario] has never worked well for me in the past,” said Daniell.
”I never had that little bit of a confidence boost kick in. I was so close so many times to getting the train going. But it didn’t happen. That was hard to deal with, because the more it happens, the harder it to get over the hurdle.”
Despite the difficult finale, Daniell is “mostly” content with his career. After eight years of trying to make it in singles – reaching a career high of 500 – Daniell became a doubles specialist in 2015.
He made 15 ATP finals, garnering five titles, with a notable run between June 2016 and May 2019 in which he reached 10 deciders. Daniell also made the last eight at grand slams on three occasions (twice at the Australian Open and once at Wimbledon) and the third round in New York and Paris.
He attained a career ranking high of No 34 in 2018 and achieved his unforgettable Olympic bronze medal win alongside Michael Venus in Tokyo.
”If you’d approached me as a 15 year old and said, ‘This is what you’re going to do in your career’, I would have jumped at it,” Daniell explained.
“But then, as you go through a career, the more you succeed, the more the goalposts shift. Making a grand slam was beyond what I ever expected for myself. But then you make them and it becomes normal, and then you’re like, ‘Well, the second week should be doable’.
“And then, what’s next? I’m content, but abilities-wise, I probably could have done better, probably could have had more success, but injuries held me back a lot.”
It’s fitting Daniell is finishing here, given the memories of his “surreal” 2010 doubles triumph with Horia Tecau after the duo teamed up at the last minute, as a condition of the Romanian being given a wildcard.
”The whole week was crazy,” recalled Daniell. “The quarter-finals and semifinals, we shouldn’t have won those matches. We were down 5-0 in the super-tiebreak in the quarters, against Tommy Robredo and Marcel Granollers, great players. In the semifinal we were down something ridiculous, too.”
They progressed – 3-6 7-6 (4) 10-8 – to make the decider, with Daniell, then the first Kiwi in an ATP final since 1999, up against Brazilian duo Marcelo Melo and Bruno Soares, who went on to win five grand slams doubles titles between them.
“We were just playing on the crowd and confidence,” said Daniell. “I was soaking it in, a 20-year-old with no expectations. In the final, we played really well and deserved to beat a top team. I vividly remember match point.”
“A lob was hit, and I was running back in case it went in. It landed about two feet out and I was thinking, ‘What the hell just happened?’ I had come from playing futures, and then you’re on a full stadium court with the Kiwi crowd and the noise. I’ll never forget those feelings.”
Daniell, who also reached the final in 2020 and the last four in 2016 and 2017, will team up with Timaru’s James Watt this week. K.P. Pannu and Ajeet Rai are the other local wildcards, while Michael Venus and his Croatian partner Nikola Mektic are top seeds.
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist since 2005, winning several national awards and covering Olympics, Fifa World Cups and America’s Cup campaigns.