Barry Buss is a retired tennis professional, author, and former U.S. Junior Davis Cup member, as well as a former record holder for his beloved UCLA Bruins. With decades of experience as a player, coach, and mentor, he has written the memoir You Can Get There From Here and First Ball to Last. He also created the First Ball to Last program, an emotional intelligence platform for competitive players, parents, and coaches. Through his work, Buss examines the emotional aspects of tennis and the personal growth it fosters.
Barry Buss
Mental Game
A Nationals invite upends home life. Whether earned by ranking, selection, qualifying, or a midnight website refresh, everything intensifies: trips unbooked, draws unknown, yet the atmosphere is charged as routines escalate, pushing you out of your comfort zone. In horse...
Features and Notes
There were a lot of drives home, just Dad and me in his two seater sports cars. I would spend a lot of time in the passenger seats of those cars. In the beginning, I was 9 at the time,...
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Back in the day, before junior tennis players started chasing ITF points all over the globe, American Junior Tennis held out a carrot of higher achievement to its players. The Junior Davis Cup Team. Junior players received an automatic berth...
Features and Notes
This is the story of my life in tennis, but really my life. I am the son of engineers. Born in California, moved to Tewksbury, Massachusetts, in my first year of life. My father wrote aerospace software. He did critical...
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Summertime, after my last talk with Coach about my future at UCLA. I'm about to head over to a new job, teaching tennis in my old hometown of Torrance on cracked public park courts with metal nets to a bunch...
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I sloshed my way through a torturous hour of drilling. Nobody wanted to be there. Not Coach, not the team, definitely not myself. But I grinded as hard as I could. Put on court five with the scrubs, I was...
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A couple of days at home. Enough time to do laundry and that was about it. I'm sure I had classes, but I couldn't have picked my professors out of a line-up. No trouble finding the practice courts though for...
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Six months in to season and the UCLA tennis schedule had become all encompassing. Matches and tournaments and travel, week after week after week. With little rest for the weary, I had even less time to process Dad's latest missive....
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Coach Bassett had a system. Everything earned, nothing given. Win, you move up. Lose, you move down. Pretty simple, don't lose, don't get dropped. Fair. Like a lot like my tennis growing up. Don't miss. Don't get yelled at. I...
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Early in the morning, I'm awakened by a knock at my door. It's my Mom. Says it's Coach Bassett on the phone and he sounded upset. Groggy, I scrambled myself together. Picking up the phone, Coach started right in, said...
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I escaped Muncie and the Westerns unscathed, setting off for the long trek to Kalamazoo for my first ever trip to our National Championships. This was the team's big week. The US National team at the US National Championships. Demands...
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At the end of Part 2 (Click Here), I had been suspended from the Junior Davis Cup team and it was agreed I would play the next event on my own, though not entirely on my own, for my JDC...
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Junior Davis Cup Camp (Click Here) completed, I returned home to my club and my friends with the great news. When I excitedly explained I'd made Junior Davis Cup, few had any idea what I was talking about, and even...
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The Davis Cup. The original team tennis. One of professional tennis' most lauded events, an international competition pitting nations against nations since the beginning of time. Each country fielding its best players. Bring the Davis Cup home and you're a...
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OK bagels are tasty but how did that term ever get applied to tennis? As in a 6-0 bagel set or worse a double bagel? I doubt you ever thought of it but... It started innocently enough. Former tour player...
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On Monday morning, September 16th, 2024, tennis lost one of its iconic figures: famed coach Robert Lansdorp. Here are a few words about the legendary teacher to so many of our sport's greatest players. If you came of age during...
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The Southern California tennis community lost one of its most iconic members last week, John "JD" Davis. I'd like to pen a few words about my former teammate, tennis peer, partner on court and in crime, and most of all,...
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After becoming sober, I bounced around a bit professional, eventually landing in Nashville, TN in 2018 to develop a new junior tennis academy. It was a bold move. Being new in town and knowing all of two people, I did...
Features and Notes
Editor's Note: When we last saw Barry he had severed his final connection with UCLA tennis where he had once set record for winning consecutive matches. The next chapters in the book chronicle his horrifying, heartbreaking slide into more and...
Mental Game
May 16th is National Armed Forces Day, a day we celebrate to honor the courageous servicemen and servicewomen on duty defending our nation around the world. As recent events in Pakistan have shown, our national defense program is second to...
Mental Game
Tax day is upon us again. If you, like myself, have found yourself starting to fill out the1040 form at 1040 p.m. on the night before the deadline, you know that attention to detail can be compromised. Honest mistakes are...
Notes on Tour
It's no secret American tennis has a problem--and has for years. A drought atop the world rankings, dwindling participation at the junior entry level. Our sport is retracting. The numbers don't lie. Participation in the lower age group tournaments has...