Sometime around 7 this morning, Soddy-Daisy resident Mike Stephens will enter the gates of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, and begin stringing rackets for numerous pros in advance of the start of the U.S. Open on Monday.
The money's not great for a 51-year-old guy who just retired from TVA's nuclear division in January, and the hours are quite long. Stephens may not return to his hotel room until close to midnight. And thanks to qualifying rounds, he will have kept that schedule for close to a month by the time the final major of the year ends on Sunday, Sept. 9.
But as the married father of three daughters said by phone late Thursday night, "I have a passion for stringing. I can't imagine not stringing. I worked on nuclear subs for 22 years, then 10 years with TVA. Now I wear shorts and tennis shoes to work every day. How blessed am I?"
Ironically, it all started five years ago as a way for Stephens to save money. With his youngest daughter, Kacey, an accomplished tennis player at Soddy-Daisy High School, Stephens was growing tired of paying others to string her rackets.
"So I bought a stringing machine," he said.
But Stephens quickly wanted more.
"I went to a symposium in Tampa that included the best stringers in the world," he said. "I caught the bug."
Manker Patten general manager Ned Caswell, who now employs Stephens as the club's top stringer, said it goes far beyond a bug.
"I've been stringing rackets for 30 years," Caswell said, "and I don't know 5 percent of what Mike knows. He doesn't do anything halfway. Once he got involved in this, he was committed to becoming one of the best in the world.
"He is, without a doubt, the premium stringer in Chattanooga. It's all so technical now. When I played, you'd play with the same racket until the strings broke. Now the top pros are changing rackets four or five times a match. We're really lucky to have Mike at Manker Patten when he's not on the road."
Yet however much Stephens had fallen in love with stringing - "I was starting to use most of my vacation time at TVA to string at tournaments," he said - a tragedy caused him to decide to string full time.
"I grew up in Lenoir City with a guy named Mike Strickland," he said. "Like a lot of friends from high school, we'd lost touch some over the years, but we'd reconnected a few years ago. But Mike got cancer and died last September. Before he died, though, he cautioned us not to wait until we were 70 or 80 to follow our dreams, because you never know how long you'll be here."
This will be Stephens' third straight year to work the U.S. Open but his first as one of 19 elite stringers for Wilson Sporting Goods.
"Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer travel with their own stringers," Stephens said of two of the sport's biggest stars. "But most of the pros, including (world No. 1) Rafa Nadal, bring their rackets to our building with very specific instructions on how they want them strung. The first year I did this, my job was to check the rackets in, cut out the old strings, then pass them along. I did a little more last year. Now I'm stringing full time."
According to Stephens, each stringer is assigned a number, such as Stringer No. 3.
"The pro is given your number," he said. "Once you start stringing a pro's racket, you string it for as long as he or she is in the tournament."
Thirteen stringers work in the main room. Six work in full view of the fans. Stephens estimates the stringers will do anywhere from 400 to 500 rackets a day.
"I've strung one in less than 10 minutes," he said, "but the goal is one every 15 minutes."
If there is one noticeable perk to the U.S. Open gig beyond occasionally glimpsing a few minutes of live action, it's getting to eat in the players' dining room.
"CoCo Vandeweghe was behind me in line one day," said Stephens, referring to the world's No. 23 women's player. "I ordered pesto chicken, then she ordered it and was told I'd taken the last one. I felt bad so I told her to take it. She said, 'No, I'd really rather have the chicken with the red sauce, but my coach wants me to eat the pesto.'
"So I take the pesto chicken and a few minutes later her coach walks in and wants to know why she's eating the red sauce. She points at me and says, 'Well, I ordered the pesto but that guy took the last one.'"
He has also had lunch with Hall of Famer Ivan Lendl and one table over from Michael Chang. Then there's his recent encounter with Billie Jean King.
"Kacey has Type 1 diabetes," Stephens said. "Billie Jean founded a scholarship program that awards six scholarships a year to tennis players with diabetes. Kacey (who now plays at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama) won one of them. I saw Billie Jean on the grounds one day and decided I'd thank her for her role in these scholarships. She's always surrounded by people to shield her a bit from the fans, and after we'd talked for a minute or two one of these folks said, 'Ms. King, we need to go.' She replied, 'No, this is important,' and we talked for another 10 minutes or so. Such a gracious lady."
His whole life has been filled with gracious ladies, including his wife of 29 years, Sherry, and their grown daughters Katie, Kelly and Kacey.
"I'm just lucky," Stephens said at weekend's dawn, "that my wife said yes when I told her I wanted to leave TVA."
Otherwise, among other things, Vandeweghe would have had to suffer through an unwanted lunch of pesto chicken.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.