How a Top 100 Tennis Pro Learned to Perform Under Pressure | Jeff Salzenstein - Part 1

Welcome to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast.

We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavlosky.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Pavlosky. And today we have a conversation that I think is gonna hit home for a lot of people. It certainly does with me. My guest today is Jeff Salzenstein, who spent over a decade competing on the world's largest stages, the US Open, Wimbledon, the French Open, training alongside legends like Roger Federer, Pete Sampras, Andy Roddick, and Michael Chang. He was a 2-time Stanford All-American, an NCAA champion, a team captain, and a top 100 world-ranked professional tennis player. But what makes the story truly remarkable isn't just the titles or the rankings. It's what happened after and through all of it. Jeff overcame 2 career-threatening injuries to crack the top 100 for the first time at age 30, becoming the oldest American to do so. That alone is a masterclass in resilience. And then life gave him an even bigger test when his younger brother Eric found himself trapped in addiction, mental health struggles, and ultimately 52 days in solitary confinement. Jeff didn't walk away. He leaned in. He fought alongside his brother through one of the hardest comebacks imaginable. And what he discovered in that process completely transformed his understanding of what it means to truly succeed. Today, Jeff channels all that experience into his work as an award-winning leadership speaker, performance advisor, and coach, helping leaders, teams, and organizations handle pressure without breaking down, recover faster, and build a culture where people actually thrive. His approach blends elite athletic performance psychology, neuroscience-backed strategies, and the kind of hard-won human wisdom that can only come from living it. Jeff, welcome to Legacy All-Stars. It's great to have you.

It's an honor to be here with you today. Thank you so much.

Yeah, my pleasure. Well, let's jump right in. You had a remarkable run as a professional athlete— Stanford, the NCAA championship, competing at the Grand Slams along some of the all-time greats. What did that journey teach you that you couldn't have learned in any other way?

That journey of playing professional tennis, which was an accident— it was not part of the plan— I grew up in Denver, Colorado. It's a ski state, in case people are wondering. It's not California. It's not Florida. It's not Texas. It's Colorado where you can barely get court time and it's cold. And so, it wasn't part of the plan. I grew up. I went to a public high school. You worked hard in school. You worked hard. If you played tennis, you worked hard at that. And then, you go to Stanford, which was a dream just to get there. And then, I transformed at Stanford. And then, that gave me the chance to play professional tennis. I thought I'd play 3 years. Hey, if I can break the top 100 in 3 years, I'll keep going. If I can't, I'll call it a day and get a real job. And then, the injuries hit and it changed the course of my life. And I think the lessons that I learned from that experience and then even my experiences as a junior tennis player and as a college tennis player, and you talked about my brother and what I experienced with him, the thing I learned is I built the muscle. And I built the skill to be able to move through hard times. And everyone has their own hard times and there's varying levels of it, of extremes. You know, people have had it a lot harder than I have, so I recognize that. But whatever you're faced in your life, whatever you perceive as failure, whatever you're struggling with, you can always come back. You can always find a way. You can always find the people around you that will support you. You might have to work hard to find all of that. But there's always a way. There's always a way to come back. There's always a way to get better. And it's in those hard moments, the painful moments, the suffering is where you grow. And so, where you're challenged. And I'm even faced with it right now with some of the things I'm doing with my speaking career, not always going the way that I want. It's forcing me to uplevel in order to get to that next level. And so, that's why the struggle is oftentimes the most amazing part of it. Even though we're in the middle of it and it's super painful and we don't want to do it, it's actually where all the juice is. And where we can grow and develop and become who we were meant to be.

Yeah. Let's talk more about that process. You overcame career-threatening injuries to reach the top 100 for the first time at age 30. Nobody had ever done that before at that age. Most people would have walked away. What kept you in the fight?

What kept me in the fight was a couple of things. The first was when I had the first injury, To my ankle, I went on a path to learn how I could heal myself from a holistic perspective. Now, we're talking 1998. This is not where Whole Foods was ever on every street corner. Core Power Yoga wasn't in every strip mall. You didn't have social media. The internet was just starting to really emerge. You had to crawl under a lot of rocks to find cutting-edge holistic information. Otherwise, you just took the knowledge that you received from the doctor or from someone in your small sphere of influence. And I just had this deep curiosity to learn how to heal my body, and that led to Working on my mindset, the psychology that— again, sports psychology is a relatively new phenomenon that really caught on probably in the late '70s, early '80s, and then by the '90s, it was starting to catch on. Dr. Jim Loehr was big in the world of sports psychology, but it took him a while to catch fire with what he was teaching and what others were teaching like him. And so, I just went on this curious journey of how to not accept what other people were saying about my career, what was next, and really learn how to unpack the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual side that all goes into performance. You cannot have one without the other and ultimately have longevity and a foundation for success and well-being. If you only focus on your body but you don't focus on your spiritual and emotional well-being, it's going to catch up to you at some point. And so, I had this insatiable curiosity. I wanted to kind of challenge the system, if you will, and see what was possible. The second thing, and it's related, is I remember going to doctor's appointments, whether it was an eye appointment or for my ankle or wherever I went for an appointment, I would walk into the room and I would check in with the receptionist and I just kept thinking to myself, I'm going to have a job like this and I'm not cut out for this. Like, I can't do the 9 to 5. Like, I knew that early. That was inspiration enough for me to say, you know what? This dream is not done yet.

Right.

And I was able to use professional tennis as the vehicle to learn the skills that I'm teaching now. So, what I later came to find out is as I started breaking through and I broke the top 100 at age 30 and I was able to make a comeback, what I learned was that I actually enjoyed that more than the tennis. So I thought I was doing it for tennis, but I actually was— it was almost like tennis was the excuse because if I wasn't playing pro tennis and I had a real job, there wouldn't have been as much motivation to learn high-performance skills. And so I had a built-in excuse to travel around the world and stretch 3 hours a day because that's what I needed for my craft.

Wow!

And I realized I just loved the aspect of studying and applying performance and even biohacking more than I enjoyed hitting tennis balls. So, I still enjoyed hitting tennis balls, but it wasn't as much— there wasn't as much passion as it was about the body and the mind and the spirit.

Yeah. Well, you know, too, and what's unique and special about tennis in general is that it's just you. Everything comes down to you. There's no teammate to bail you out of a circumstance. And I've always loved that about tennis. I've played tennis myself, not at your level, of course, But I love it. I love the way pressure affects people and the way that you have to overcome pressure as an individual in tennis because there's no net. There's no falling. There's no net to keep you from falling in tennis as opposed to other sports. There's a net, but it's in the middle. But I love that. Speaking of pressure, you were competing at the highest level. What was your relationship with pressure? Did it feel like a threat or did you find ways to channel it?

Well, it's a great question because now that I'm doing what I'm doing around leadership development, the keynote speaking, the workshops, the coaching, the advising around performance, I like to say that I'm a performance under pressure expert, if you will.

Uh-huh.

So, the category or what I solve for, for people that are wanting to be elite and stay elite without losing themselves, without selling out, without sacrificing their well-being is How do we perform at elite levels? How do we show up with excellence without losing ourselves? How do we do it under pressure? And my relationship with pressure is interesting because— and this is why I believe I can really speak into it and teach it at a deep level— is because I wasn't clutch under pressure all the time. I didn't have the Michael Jordan gene or the Kobe Bryant gene. Now, we know those guys, even though they're perceived as being killers and clutch. They also failed a lot too. We just don't talk about all the missed shots. But on the spectrum, Pete Sampras was more clutch than me. Okay? I can admit it. He could hit the 120-mile-an-hour second serve in the finals of Wimbledon on the line with everything on the line. He was able to harness and channel that pressure into improved performance. And I would say that my relationship with performance was interesting Because on a scale compared to the rest of the world, probably in the top 1% to 2%. But when we're talking about Pete Sampras or Michael Jordan, now we're talking about rarefied air, the 0.1%. And I think there were so many occasions on the pro tour where I was about to win and I was about to beat someone top 10 in the world, and my game would drop 3% to 5% in that moment. And that was enough.

Wow.

to lose against the best. Now, against someone below me, I could still probably choke a little bit and find a way to win. And so, overall, I think that I handle pressure pretty darn well. And I think, again, the outside world would say, Jeff, you are extraordinary at handling pressure. I mean, look at your life, what you've done. And yet, internally, I know that there have been too many moments where I played worse under pressure than I did when there was less pressure. And so, it made me go on a journey to understand pressure and see what was missing and then how I could apply it to myself in my future life, in my current life now, and then also to be able to— can I distill it into a framework that can help people perform under pressure in all the things they're doing? So, really, what I'm doing now is just taking all of the experiences, all the failures, all the struggles with pressure at my level, seeing what I experienced with my brother and with others that I've supported, packaged it up into a framework that people can understand and start practicing and systematically get a little bit better every single day. And then also have enough flexibility where we can adjust protocols and tools and insights for that person so that it's tailored for them or tailored for the audience. But overall, I think my relationship with pressure is a bit complicated because I'm pretty darn good under pressure myself. I think I've proven it. I also think that I could be better at it. And there are certain athletes and performers that have that ability to rise when the pressure is highest. I'm very curious about that and how people can develop those skills.

Yeah, for sure. Well, let's shift gears and talk about your brother, Eric, in that chapter and how it affected your journey and how it affected your ability to help others.

Yeah, my brother Eric, Eric with a K. What a lighthouse! What a force, a force of nature! People will say you know everyone's unique and there's no one like so and so. There truly is or was no one like my brother. He had an infectious energy. He has an infectious energy. I like to talk about him in the present tense as if he's with me in spirit. He has this. He had this beautiful energy. He'd light up a room. He was hilarious. He was funny. He was engaging. He loved to learn. And with him, it was complicated because on a couple of levels. One, I didn't grow up with him. He's significantly younger. There's a 17-year age difference. When my father and my stepmother were pregnant and he was about to be born, I'm getting ready to go into my senior year of high school. And they're having this baby, and they asked me if I would be his godfather, and I was his godfather. And you know, with that age gap, I'm almost old enough or old enough to be his father. So this relationship developed as he grew up that I was a father figure, a guide, a mentor. You know, he looked up to me as a pro tennis player. Loved basketball. He was a star point guard on his teams growing up. I love basketball. I always joked that I had an affair with basketball. Don't tell tennis because I just. I just loved basketball. And I wish if I was 6'6, I would've played college basketball and maybe in the pros. Who knows? I loved basketball. And so, we shared that. And as he got older, there were some things that happened in his teenage years. He was diagnosed with ADD. He took medication to work with that. He quit basketball at a certain stage. And so, when you quit a sport, It can lead you down certain paths. And what's interesting is when I was 15 years old, I went from number 1 in the country as a 12-year-old to number 70 in the country as a 15-year-old. And when you drop that far and you're that good, it's a great excuse to quit. I didn't quit. I doubled down. I got back to the fundamentals. I got my ranking back up and I went to Stanford. When it got hard for Eric, he quit. And when you don't have a sport or an outlet and then you're seeking validation and attention and to feel good about yourself, you may start hanging out with people that don't make the best decisions. And so, that led him to make some decisions around maybe drinking, smoking weed, what have you in high school. So, he started developing, I guess you could call it addiction to substances in high school. And I remember I was going through a massive crossroads in my professional tennis career. I was 33 turning 34 years old. I had broken the top 100 at 30. The next couple of years were filled with more injuries, more frustration, the ranking dropped, doubting my existence, doubting what I was doing, doubting how I would transition from pro tennis to the next thing in my life. And I went to go visit my family in Florida and I walked in on him and he was passed out on the floor. There was foam coming out of his mouth. He was basically overdosing from a cocktail of drugs. And it's kind of like the mother that sees their child underneath a car and they can lift the 5,000-pound car and drag it and they don't know where they got that strength. A version of that happened. I didn't lift anything, but I picked him up. I put him in the hospital, drove him to the hospital. They pumped his stomach. He was okay. And that was the moment, you know, I think about like, you know, life has these moments, these defining moments. We all have them, whether it's with our health, someone else's health we care about, a relationship, our career. We go through these defining moments and we always get to decide how we're going to show up in these moments. We get to be aware enough and have the skills to handle these moments and talk about pressure. Like, what do you do in these moments? And all those years of playing tennis, I think, allowed me to Detach from the outcome, detach from the emotions of it all in the moment, and just say, what is the task at hand? I got to save my brother.

Right.

And so, had I not been visiting and he had overdosed and my dad called me and said, hey, this happened to Eric, I might have been like, oh, that's terrible. I'm really sorry. But when I saw it physically and how low he was and how lost he was, it was almost like my out or my excuse to say, oh, I'm not supposed to play pro tennis anymore. It's time for me to help my brother. And so, there was never even a deliberation. There wasn't a, should I keep playing pro tennis or should I help my brother? It was a switch. And so, within 6 days, I had borrowed $35,000 from a family member and a wealthy friend. I had found a rehab facility. I got him there, dropped him off, and that began my coaching career. Side by side as he's going into rehab, I'm quitting the pro tour and becoming a coach. And I realized within the first month of coaching tennis players, junior tennis players, and parents, I realized, oh my gosh, I am so much more fulfilled helping someone hit a forehand or learn a new skill or work on the mental game than I was playing pro tennis. I was miserable a lot of the time playing pro tennis because you lose a lot. And it's hard to stay upbeat when you're losing and you're not making a lot of money and you're traveling and you don't have a ton of support. It's a hard, hard business. And again, you learn how to get tough through those losses, but it wasn't easy. And so, just coaching was amazing. And then, my brother went on a crazy journey himself, went into the rehab, came out of rehab, moved in with me, relapsed, moved back to Florida. Committed 2 felonies, went to prison, and then halfway through prison, we weren't in touch because I had a boundary. I learned about boundaries. When I coach now, if someone's struggling with boundaries in relationships or with communication, I have that skill set because of what I went through with my brother that I wouldn't normally have had. It was a very extreme situation, but he called me from prison halfway through. And basically, he was like, Jeff, like, you're the only guy I know that's Doing it, like really living this performance well-being lifestyle. Like, I don't even know who to turn to, but you're my guy. How do I turn this around? I don't know how to do it. And so, we just began the process. I said, listen, you're going to call me every week. We're going to get on a call. I'm going to listen to what you're doing. I'm going to give you advice. And I just started coaching him up every week, pouring into him, pouring into his body, his mind, his soul. He started just transforming himself. And I watched this thing happen firsthand. And so, I've had experience I experienced transforming myself in tennis. I went from a kid who was super small, getting overpowered. I went through puberty. I grew. I was a kid who had a bad serve. I developed the serve. I've continued to iterate and evolve my tennis career and my life even up until now. So, I have that muscle developed. And then, I watched my brother do the most amazing transformation of all time. He completely transformed his body. He transformed his mind with his thoughts and his words. He started being of service to the inmates. He started cleaning the toilets at 5:00 AM just to be of service. And I mean, I realized that you're serious about transformation because you never cleaned the toilets at home. You weren't doing that. He started doing breathwork and journaling and meditation. He was just all in. And it was such a beautiful thing to watch someone who, devoid of the distractions from the real world, he was in prison and he was literally changing himself and that was what he was doing 24 hours a day. And so, when he got out of prison, he was just committed to sharing his message with the world. And you could just feel that energy. I would say, you're going to be the next Tony Robbins. You have that kind of story or a way about you. And we talked about being on stages together. Within 2.5 years of getting out of prison, he won a speaking contest. He won a speaking contest which won him a TEDx Talk. And so, when people tell me they can't do things or they're struggling and I just say, listen, my brother spent He spent 52 days in solitary confinement. He was at his lowest rock bottom truly in a maximum security prison. And when he got out, within 2.5 years, he's standing on a TEDx stage telling his story. That's not a normal story. That doesn't happen.

Right.

And so, I try to inspire people with that message that anything is possible and you can change and you can transform. You just got to learn to get out of your own way and apply the fundamentals to own your zone. And yeah, and so, he was just so uber-successful out of the gates. But life brings pressure and life brings stress. And sometimes even the most successful people struggle with it, oftentimes more than anyone else. And that's what he experienced. He experienced a challenge with success, his relationship with success compared to how he used to be, his identity. And when you don't have the tools or you haven't healed yourself enough, you're going to turn towards things. that will soothe the pain or soothe the discomfort and the pressure. And for him, his go-to was drugs. And so, he started using drugs again after all the beautiful work that he did. And ultimately, we lost him to a fentanyl overdose almost 4 years ago.

So sorry.

And so, I had this firsthand account of helping him, not talking to him for years, then being his best friend for years, then watching him succeed and being so happy. I'm supposed to be his cornerman now. Like, he's supposed to be doing this podcast and I'm supposed to be helping his brand and his coaching and like keeping him on track. And now what I've learned from this experience is that this is my story to share with the world and bring him with me. We were supposed to be on stages together. We are on stages together because I bring him in the room and I share the story and really just honoring my brother in a positive light, um, that a lot of people are struggling out there and they need to hear this story and they need to know that If I'm open and vulnerable about what I've learned and even mistakes I've made and I open this conversation up, there's someone in the room that says, oh my gosh, I'm not alone, or maybe there's a way through and there's a way out, or maybe I can help my son or my daughter. And so, this is how I can make a difference in the world. And it's a beautiful thing for me to get to this stage in my life. I'm 52 and I get a second chance. My first chance was playing pro tennis, but it was all for me. Now, I get a second chance to be on big stages and help people. And I don't think there's anything better than being of service in this way and being able to share everything I've learned and being able to bring my brother along on this journey.

This is the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Pavlosky. Today's episode is the part 1 of a special 2-part episode with Jeff Salzenstein. What a powerful episode this is. I know you're all going to enjoy it. This will be the first part, and come back next week for part 2.