New Zealand’s Marcus Daniell might not be the most well-known player on the tennis tour, but perhaps he should be, as so often, the good news stories are blanketed by the controversies and scandals in the sport.
If there was ever a good news story that deserves more coverage, it’s this one.
As far as a tennis career goes, Daniell has reached a career high of 34 in doubles, and 500 in singles. There have been plenty of highlights, including a doubles bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics, quarter-finals appearances at both Wimbledon and the Australian Open, 5 ATP titles, and 25 ATP Challenger titles. Although some might suggest his greatest achievement in tennis is receiving the 2021 Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award. In accepting this honour, he joined the likes of Novak Djokovic, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and of course, Arthur Ashe.
But then again perhaps that is not quite right. The award is not necessarily an achievement, but rather a by-product of the hard work, dedication, and passion that Marcus has put into his charity work over the years.
In the aftermath of this prestigious award, Daniell wrote about his charity journey on the ATP website:
“My journey in philanthropy began in 2015. It was the first year I focused on doubles and it was also the first year I made money playing tennis. I was able to put some savings away in the bank at the end of the year and with that little bit of financial security came this really strong urge to give back.”
“I had the same doubts that pretty much everyone has about the charities I’d grown up around. I didn’t know how they were using my money or how much good my donations were doing. I jumped on Google to search how I could best give back, and came across the idea of effective giving. This led me to learning about earning-to-give. Essentially, the more money I earned playing tennis, the more I could give away to people who needed it 50,000 times more than I do. It was a light-bulb moment.”
Charity Starts From Home
Daniell started donating to the most cost-effective, impactful charities around the world. Yet it wasn’t enough to scratch that itch of doing some tangible good in the world.
The following year, he pledged 1% of his annual income to charity. It was this move that gave his tennis life meaning. More than just travelling the globe collecting points, Marcus was now genuinely committed to winning matches, not just for himself, but because each win would actually make an impact on the world, and on the people who needed the most support.
From that year onwards, Marcus has lifted his percentage of income, to the point where he has pledged to donate at least 10% of his earnings, to effective charities, for the rest of his life. But still, that wasn’t enough for him. He could do more.
On 30 November 2020, just weeks after turning 31, Marcus founded ‘High Impact Athletes’, which, according to their website, ‘exist to turn the sporting sector into a force for good’.
The idea of High Impact Athletes, is to essentially filter out the charities which aren’t having much impact, and work with those that are making a large difference in the world. They work with the most stringent charity evaluators in the world, to identify the best giving opportunities for athletes and the public.
Now, four years later, and after a few tough years, Marcus is in the final stretch of his career. He has decided to hang up the racket in Auckland, come January 2025. But before then, he has made one final pledge to finish his career. For season 2024, the New Zealander is donating a whopping 50% of his prize-money to charity.
The Covid/Injury Battle
The decision to retire as a professional athlete is never easy, but for Marcus, it had been bouncing around since the Covid years.
“It was really, really tough during that COVID stretch for people, particularly from New Zealand and Australia. I basically got stuck outside New Zealand for about 20 months and couldn’t get home. New Zealand borders were shut, and you had to enter a lottery to see if you could get a hotel room to go through quarantine. I just never got lucky and was getting more and more burnt out as the months went by.”
“I was already in a pretty dark place before the Tokyo Olympics, which was July, August 2021. I knew I needed a break. My plan was, as soon as I could get back to New Zealand, to take a few months and try and recharge the batteries and see if I could kindle the fire again. I managed to get a hotel room after the Australian Open in 2022. So I went back and put the tennis bag in the closet and was just trying to sort of forget about it for a little while.”
Around that time, Marcus’ knee had been troubling him for the previous 6 months, but things were to get worse around a month into his break, when he completely tore the meniscus. This forced him into an extended break after surgery. While he was expecting a 6-9 month hiatus following this setback, there were further complications, leading to a longer stint on the sidelines.
“Something went wrong in the recovery or in the surgery. So about 11 months after the surgery I still couldn’t move sideways and had another scan, and they realised they had to operate again. A year after the first surgery I had another surgery on the same thing. That recovery was quicker because they just basically cut the meniscus out. But by the time I was recovered from that surgery and back up to something resembling normal strength, it was already September/October, 2023.”
This meant there was no real point in pushing hard to get back on court at the end of the season, adding extra months away from the tour. It was at this time he was openly wondering whether he had the desire to rejoin the tennis circuit at all. But after a lot of time to reflect on his journey so far, there were three main reasons that made him want to come back.
“One was that 2024 is an Olympic year, and the Olympics have been the most special experiences of my career. I really wanted to have another experience of that, particularly because Tokyo was so eerie and strange. Paris, I imagine, is just going to be incredible. So trying to get myself in shape to make it to the Olympics was one big reason. Another reason was, the decision to stop was sort of forced on me with the injury. I wanted to get a bit of closure and finish my way.
Third reason was definitely for the charity stuff. I’ve been really passionate about what we’re doing with ‘High Impact Athletes’ and I thought if I could do a season long campaign with a donation amount that was striking, (50%) then that could perhaps inspire other athletes to do something similar. It’s actually been great. I’ve got a lot of support from other tennis players which is really cool.
We have a number of tennis players who are pledging, mostly at 1 or 2%. With ‘High Impact Athletes’, the level that we try to get athletes to commit to is a 2% pledge. Me and a handful of others are above that at 10% minimum. I’ve been at 10% for some years now, and this year with the campaign, the 50% is sort of a one-off, because I definitely don’t earn enough money to be giving away 50% every year.
I just want to try and win as many matches as possible, and raise as much money for charity as I can, while I’m still out here.”
Some of those players that are on board in pledging a percentage of their income, include, Jan-Lennard Struff, Joe Salisbury, Erin Routliffe, Storm Hunter, Nicole Melichar-Martinez, and Wesley Koolhof to name a few.
One of the most important pieces of information he wants the public to be aware of, is that charities aren’t all the same. In fact, there can be an enormous difference in how much good your money does, simply based on the charity you choose to support.
“It sounds outrageous but some charities can be literally thousands of times more impactful than others even when they’re working in the same place or on the same problem, I think that’s a really important message for people to understand because, let’s say you’re donating 10 bucks a month to a charity, if you simply redirect that money to a much better charity then you can be doing thousands of times more good for the same amount of money. I don’t think many people know that the differences between charities are so large.”
The Olympic Dream
For the remainder of this year, Marcus plans to use his last handful of protected rankings on Wimbledon, the US Open, and hopefully the Olympic Games, which for the New Zealander, is the number one priority, and highlight of his career.
“For me, the Olympics is the pinnacle. I’ve always felt different playing for New Zealand compared to just playing tournaments on the tour. That includes Davis Cup as well. To me, there’s something incredibly special about representing your country and the Olympics is the pinnacle of that. And I think we’re also lucky being from New Zealand, the culture of the New Zealand team at the Olympics is just incredibly special. So special that you have other athletes sort of running over to watch the hakas as you get welcomed to the building. For me, it is the pinnacle.
I’d put an Olympic gold medal ahead of Grand Slams. I’d put a bronze as probably sort of something equivalent in my own mind. But I don’t think that’s uniform across the tennis world as an opinion. I know some people choose not to play the Olympics even though they could. And to me, that just absolutely baffles me because you never know when you’re going to have a career-ending injury or whatever. It might be your only chance. Since I was a kid, it’s been one of my major goals, major dreams.”
What Does the Future Hold?
Beyond the US Open, it will depend on where his real ranking sits, as to whether he’ll enter more events. Either way though, the masterplan is to retire on his own terms, at his home tournament in Auckland, come January 2025. Once that last ball is struck, the plan is to dive head-first into ‘High Impact Athletes’, and where it leads from there, even Daniell isn’t sure.
“I really do think that there’s some serious potential to move a ton of money and raise awareness for the differences between charities. My vision is to grow High Impact Athletes to the point where we need a full-time team of 6 to 10 full time employees. At the moment we’re about 3 to 3 and a half. At that point I think I’d probably want to give the reins to someone else. I’m not a huge fan of managing people, so maybe give the sort of executive director role to someone and maybe just stay on in the athlete relationship space, or the public facing space. Beyond that I don’t really know. I’ve always really enjoyed the startup world and building something from nothing like going from zero to one, it’s part of why I’m so passionate about High Impact Athletes. It’s just an idea in the brain and then you make it into something and you see it catch on with people. I get a lot of pleasure out of that.”
For more information about High Impact Athletes, or to make a pledge, please click here.
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