MARK OF A MAN
STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME
IT’S A WEDNESDAY morning when I speak by phone with Mark Philippoussis, who it so happens is coming down from a surfing-induced high. The previous day he’d struck it lucky at his local beach of Jan Juc, southwest of Melbourne. “It was getting to low tide and that spot is best in low tide,” he recalls. “It was one of my favourite breaks and super clean. Normally, there are 20 people vying for one take-off spot, but it was just me and another guy. My wife had gone for a walk with my daughter, and my son was at school, so I had nothing to rush back for. I was out there for two hours.”
We talk into the afternoon, and virtually irrespective of the topic – family, his new business venture, tennis, fitness, his recent plunge into military-style training – Philippoussis sounds uniformly enthused. He is either a singularly fulfilled and contented man or masterful at giving that impression.
On and off between 1995-2006, Philippoussis was among the world’s best and most compelling tennis players, peaking at a ranking of No. 8 in the first half of 1999. Handsome and burly, with the chest and shoulders of a rugby forward, the 196-centimetre gentle giant owned the sport’s biggest serve, which he backed up with a power-laden baseline game and penetrating volleys. On his day he could dust anyone, but because he instinctively trod a fine line between boldness and recklessness, he could also fall backwards out of tournaments at the darndest times. He reached finals at
