Women's History Month Feature: Tiffany Fong on motherhood and growing up in a tennis family

Photo: Tiffany Fong (third from right) at a 5.0 Nationals tournament she played while still pregnant with her son, Trevor. 

You could be forgiven for assuming tennis is the priority in Tiffany Fong’s house. 

Afterall, Fong’s father, Gary Lee, was heavily involved with the USTA as a player and volunteer on numerous boards and committees for over 25 years. She and her sisters, Trina Lee and Tisha Kermoian, all earned scholarships and played collegiately at University of the Pacific. 

The three sisters practically grew up at tennis tournaments. 

The tennis bug made it to the next generation too with Fong’s children Trevor and Eden now successful young players in their own right. 

But despite the family-wide love for tennis, as a mother Fong focuses on balance and is careful that her own children don’t get too absorbed with the competitive side. 

That comes from her own parents though. 

“Our family was very lowkey,” she said. “It was like ‘you play because you want to play, and if you don’t want to play then don’t play’.” 

Despite how ingrained tennis was in their lives, the weekend tournaments they traveled to were never assigned any more pressure than they needed. Those trips were as much about being on a family vacation as they were about tennis.

“I try to do that with Eden too or with my son,” she says, recalling a recent trip to a tournament in Irvine where she and Eden spent time in Los Angeles after Eden’s run at the tournament ended early. “You just have to have a balance and not make it so stressful on the kids.”

She does see similarities between her journey as a young girl in tennis compared to Eden’s today. There was always a “core group” of players that they would see at every tournament, that part hasn’t changed. 

But the number of opportunities and avenues for players has changed, with more tournaments and levels reaching a greater number of athletes.

“When we were growing up, everybody entered one tournament,” she recalls. “There were never as many choices of tournaments as there are now.”

Fong was coming up in the tennis world as Title IX began to take effect and said she’s seen its impact in her and Eden’s playing careers, with the exception that there are more college scholarships available to girls now than then. 

One big difference though is that Eden doesn’t have to look far for female role models. She counts CiCi Bellis as one and it’s not insignificant that young girls in tennis today have role models they can see playing on TV within their own tennis communities. 

While Fong is looking forward to her daughter getting to experience the team side of tennis in high school soon, there is one person she’ll have to wait a bit longer to share the court with. Fong wants to play a tournament with her but doesn’t quite meet the ‘super senior’ requirement just yet. 

“I said okay, we have five years and by then we should be able to do pretty well,” she laughs.