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Jeff Morrison was a top-20 player nationally as a junior in the 1990s, but he never won a singles national title, and the best he did at the USTA Boys National Championships at Kalamazoo was the quarterfinals.

Former Florida Standout Jeff Morrison
© Marcia Frost, College and Junior Tennis

What came next was unexpected, except for those who followed Morrison closely and saw the untapped potential of a West Virginia native who didn't train full-time in tennis until he was 16. Morrison played his freshman season at Florida with a one-handed backhand to accommodate a broken wrist.

Fully healthy for the first time in two years, Morrison won the NCAA men's singles title as a sophomore, beating Harvard's James Blake in a memorable three-set match. He went on to play seven years on the ATP Tour and got as high as No. 85 in the world.

Morrison was best remembered as a pro for being the last American man standing at Wimbledon in 2002 on a day when Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi lost in the second round while Morrison upset former world No. 1 player Juan Carlos-Ferrero.

Now eight years into his retirement from tennis, Morrison is the CEO of the family business, C.I. Thornburg Co., Inc., in Lexington, Ky. The company, based in Morrison's hometown of Huntington, W.Va., provides services and products for the municipal water and wastewater industry.

TennisRecruiting.net recently caught up with Morrison and asked him about his surprising rise in tennis and his transition into the business world. In this question-and-answer, the 36-year-old father of two reflected on his tennis career, offered some recruiting advice for today's juniors and explained how he believes his experience as a student-athlete prepared him for his current job.

Questions and Answers

Tennis Recruiting (TR): Tell us about your job. What do you do at C.I. Thornburg?

Jeff Morrison (JM): I'm the CEO and have been for almost two years in January. It's quite a learning process for me to be in charge of leading a company that my dad did such a good job of leading and my grandfather before that, but I'm putting one foot in front of another and improving every day, and the company is growing.

Morrison was inducted into the ITA Hall of Fame earlier this year
courtesy, Intercollegiate Tennis Association

JM: No, not at all. I didn't just go to college and expect a job at the family business. I made a career doing something else. My uncle and dad own a business where I grew up, and I was trying to make a decision [after leaving the ATP Tour]. My dad brought me in and asked if I wanted to be part of it and offered me a job doing this in Lexington, Ky. It was not something I'd considered before that. I prayed about it, thought about it, decided it was the thing to do for our family to come to Lexington. I started here in the spring of 2007.

TR: Tell us about growing up in Huntington. You were a very good junior player, but not one that anyone thought would win an NCAA singles title or make the Top 100 in the world. How do you explain your unlikely career?

JM: When I was younger, I wasn't hitting tennis balls four, five hours a day. I played all sports and enjoyed myself. I played golf and baseball. I was good, maybe top 20 in the country in the 14s and 16s, but I didn't sink my teeth into it until I moved away my junior year [to train at the Gary Johnson Tennis Academy in Greenville, S.C.]. I shot up the pole quickly once I put time into it.