One of the major storylines that will likely encapsulate the 2024 Australian Open qualifying is the potential presence of a professional tennis player who is a close content creator.
Jules Marie, a 32-year-old from France, picked up a tennis racket for the first time at eight because a friend of his in school was playing, but seemingly quit the sport in September 2015 at 23 after a run of seven straight defeats on the professional circuit.
But to make ends meet, Marie played prize money tournaments in France for the next four years. He also offered tennis lessons for a fee and briefly worked with the French Tennis Federation.
But in 2019, when the world grappled with the coronavirus pandemic, he made a career-altering move. At the height of the pandemic, Jules Marie and his twin brother Arthur found an alternative to helping people improve their games without playing and decided to start a YouTube channel.
Upon resumption of the tour from lockdown, Marie began filming himself playing prize money events to build an audience. This move helped his YouTube channel gain traction.
He was a hitting partner at the 2021 French Open, where he trained with top players, including World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, an interaction he videotaped and which brought even more numbers.
It was late in 2021 when he realized he still had something to give on the top tiers of professional tennis and restarted his career from scratch. In 2022, he managed to re-enter the Top 500 on the ATP Tour.
After successful crowdfunding, he extended his tennis dream for another year. This week, Marie has smashed his previous best ranking of No. 228, thanks to his late-season surge, which yielded two runner-up finishes and a title at the ITF $15,000 event in Kuwait this past weekend.
He has risen to a new career-high of No. 226, well within the 2024 Australian Open qualifying cut-off mark.
His YouTube channel, which he co-founded in 2019, has over 100,000 subscribers and very recently received a silver plaque for this landmark. His videos have also racked up over 19 million views.
"Thanks to the YouTube channel, I can pay everything, like the cameraman, the six other people who help me on this project. I can pay the flights, the food, the hotels for everyone. It's thanks to the YouTube channel, the sponsors. In 2014, and ‘15, it was my parents, it was me, so it was more difficult."
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