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Ex-tennis star Richey recounts long battle with depression

By day, tennis star Cliff Richey played out his prime on the court.By night, Richey soaked in alcohol his fears about fading sports skills.
Cliff Richey
Tennis celebrity Cliff Richey

WASHINGTON — By day, tennis star Cliff Richey played out his prime on the court.

By night, Richey soaked in alcohol his fears about fading sports skills.

To sleep, he swallowed a Valium chaser after the alcohol, self-medicating with a double shot of downers.

“From 1972 to 1978, I knew that there was something wrong, but I just thought it was the stresses and strains of a demanding career and playing 26 weeks a year all over the globe,” Richey, 63, said.

Depression was what was wrong, but it would be perhaps two decades before he got help and a diagnosis, Richey told an audience during a breakfast speech late last week at the 2010 National Alliance on Mental Illness Convention in Washington.

San Angelo, Texas-native Richey and his oldest daughter, Hilaire Richey Kallendorf, wrote a book published this year about his life on the courts and in the grip of depression: Acing Depression: A Tennis Champion’s Toughest Match.

Richey said their purpose was to educate the public and give people hope for recovery.

“Only the big boy up there can take an old, worn-out tennis career, couple it with depression and put a package together that helps other people,” Richey said after his speech.

During his tennis career, he focused not so much on just winning as on building skills. He knew his skill set would bring him the victories he craved.

These days, he hands out a tennis pro trading card. It shows the Richey of the 26-year tennis career, highlighted by being the hero of the 1970 championship-winning U.S. Davis Cup team and winner of the first professional Grand Prix points title.

In the photograph on the card, the sports star extends his racket, reaching. His eyes are on the ball hovering in a corner of the photo. The well-defined leg muscles of a practiced athlete bulge mid-step.

From the beginning, Richey knew he’d have a relatively short time to make money and make a name for himself.

Meanwhile, he lost skills that practice couldn’t rekindle, beginning with an unorthodox backhand that had racked up points.

The loss of his abilities triggered episodes of depression, Richey said.

In the early 1990s, he almost didn’t make it through a particularly tough stretch of life after his skills similarly faded in his new favorite game, golf.

“I had black trash bags over my windows. I could not sleep. I could not drive a car. I couldn’t get out of the house,” he said.

He sought counselling with a Christian therapist but made more progress after his dermatologist diagnosed his clinical depression on a routine visit. A prescription for Zoloft, an antidepressant he still takes, soon followed.

Along the way, Richey quit drinking and chewing tobacco, and educated himself about depression. He still has bouts of depression but remains alert for triggers. Along with the medication, Richey says he fights the “bully” and “liar” that is depression with cognitive therapy and a healthy lifestyle.

“It lies at you 24/7 that nothing is worth doing,” Richey said. “It’s a bully because it comes at you when you’re in a weakened condition.”

Audience member Glenn B. Koons of Reading, Pa., said Richey’s three-pronged approach is cutting edge and is part of what Koons practices as a certified peer specialist.

Koons urges clients to draw on the things that made them happy when they were well — maybe listening to music or bowling — to help them prepare to return to life outside a hospital.

At times, Richey’s speech brought tears to the eyes of some in the audience.

Richey says he turned to family and friends as part of his own personal version of cognitive therapy.

He comes from a tennis playing family, which includes older sister Nancy Richey, a tennis champion among the first women to play the sport professionally. His late father George Richey was coach and manager for “Richey Inc.,” helping Richey and his sister succeed, Cliff Richey said.

His father didn’t understand depression, but when the phone rang at 9 a.m. every day, Richey knew it was his dad, ready to listen.

After his 89-year-old father died of cancer in 2008, the backyard Richey family tennis court in San Angelo was to be torn down and bulldozed.

“I went down to the court to soak up 40 years of memories, and I saw the handle of the gate hanging there,” Richey said.

His dad had touched it more than anyone else in the family. Richey keeps the gate handle in his golf bag.

“I feel like my dad gave me many handles on being successful in life, one thing he told me that’s the last five words of my book: ‘Never, ever, ever give up,’ “ Richey said.