Local Tennis Standout Taube Driven for Success

Mason Taube’s tennis résumé, current rankings, future college plans — they may indicate he’s an elite player with ceaseless dedication to his craft, but they don’t capture an all-important dynamic in the young man’s pursuit of greatness. For all that tennis has given Taube — an untold number of tournament victories, a current No.1 ranking in Georgia, a Division I full scholarship — so, too, has it demanded incredible life-altering sacrifices that are not required of similarly skilled athletes in many other sports.

At this hour, Taube is the No.19 ranked tennis player in the United States with designs on competing soon in the Junior Grand Slams. He will be playing at his dream school of Georgia Tech next fall, becoming the third member of his family to be playing Division I tennis, joining his two cousins who play at the University of Southern California and Michigan. If all goes according to plan, he could very well be competing against the likes of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner at a future U.S. Open. But it’s all come at a steep price. In addition to the non-stop daily grind of grueling training exercises, Taube’s global tennis travels have compelled him to undergo online schooling over the past several years, isolating him from friends and, at times, even his nuclear family.

When Taube was an eighth grader at Ridgeview Charter Middle School, it became apparent that he had a chance to do some special things on the tennis court. But high-level amateur tennis is unique in that there is regular travel (domestic and international) for competition, making it virtually impossible for participants to attend school in-person — or continue playing other sports, which for Taube meant saying goodbye to soccer.

After transitioning from Ridgeview to Capstone Academy, a hybrid in-person/remote school, Taube’s national and international ranking kept ticking up, which only presented more travel demands. As tenth grade dawned, he concluded that an entirely online education offered by the Fulton Academy of Virtual Excellence (FAVE) was the only feasible option. Of course, the MS Teams meetings and Zoom calls have been time-efficient, allowing him to squeeze in his five hours of training and fitness workouts every day, but the unconventional academic program has had its drawbacks.

“It’s definitely also hard to see all my friends that I grew up with having a bunch of fun at school,” Taube, a truly delightful young man, acknowledged when speaking to the AJT last week. “The social part is, of course, very challenging online, because I’m not really interacting with kids every single day.”

The decision to focus exclusively on tennis also precluded him from competing with and against friends on the soccer field. As an adolescent, this was not exactly a no-brainer decision for Taube, as he had been a standout soccer player for years and loved the sport. Even today, it’s not easy to pinpoint the exact reason(s) why he stopped being a dual-sport athlete.

“I really don’t know the main reason why. I think it was partially my parents probably. I switched coaches, and so I think it was really my coach [Marcelo Ferreira] that influenced me, because we really trusted him,” shared Taube, who has, however, picked up golf on an informal basis, finding it a nice change of pace from tennis.

The social isolation and singular focus on tennis can be draining at times, but the constant globetrotting from one tennis tourney to another has given Taube opportunities that most teens can only dream of. Tennis has taken him to, among many other places, Corpus Christi, Texas, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Vancouver, and Indian Wells, Calif. Sometimes, he has his parents and Ferreira, who operates a 20-player academy out of Windy Hill, alongside him; other times, he has to navigate a foreign land and culture all by himself. “It has helped me mature a lot more than compared to some of my friends. I’m having to figure out a lot of logistics that lots of kids my age probably aren’t having to do.”

Taube’s parents, Ben and Julie, have also had to make their own sacrifices in supporting their son through his journey. Just last month, Julie, a nutritionist by trade and former high school tennis player at Riverwood (where her son would have attended had he gone the public school route), was compelled to make last-minute plans to switch around clients so she could accompany him to Clemson for a tournament. Taube’s older sister, Leah, a sophomore at the University of Georgia, who played tennis up until her senior year of high school and actually inspired her brother to take up the sport initially, also goes out of her way to attend matches.

As for the tennis competition itself, Taube is currently focusing his time and energy on competing in International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments in order to bump up his junior international ranking and punch his ticket to the Junior Grand Slams. As of press time, he’s ranked just outside the Top 200.

“Tennis is a very mental sport, so it’s tough to always be motivating myself to want to keep fighting and pushing through when times get tough on the court,” explained Taube, who excels in both singles and doubles. “I fight a lot on court. I don’t give up. I grind, but I look to finish points when I can. But I’m pretty calm on court. I don’t really let negativity get to me.”

As for the string of sacrifices and commitments he’s made to emerge as one of the nation’s top players, Taube says simply, but unhesitatingly, “It’s paid off.”