Catching Up With Steve Johnson
Aubrey Kragen
4/21/2021
USC men's tennis alum Steve Johnson, who led the Trojans to four straight NCAA team championships and captured back-to-back singles titles, recently took over the @USC_Athletics Instagram Story to answer questions from fans.
Here are the highlights from his Q&A:
Q: What was the best thing about playing at USC?
A: The best thing about USC for me was my teammates. They were basically family, like brothers to me. Coaches included. Couldn't have had a better experience. The camaraderie and family at USC was the key for me.
Q: What was your favorite memory at USC?
A: Winning our first NCAA title in 2009 as a team, and then my second-favorite is winning the NCAA team title in 2012. Anything you can share with your 12 closest buddies is great.
Q: What has been the favorite moment of your pro career?
A: Getting to play in the Olympics. Being there to represent your country and also getting to catch up with other USC athletes and other Trojan greats who were there competing in their respective sports as well.
Q: How's life as a new dad?
A: Life as a new dad is stressful, but I got lucky. Kendall Bateman, former USC volleyball great, and I welcomed our little daughter into the world end of last year and I couldn't be happier. Hopefully she will follow in our footsteps at USC.
Q: What do you see as your greatest strength as an athlete?
A: My greatest strength as an athlete I think is my competitiveness. There's no quit in me. That's how I've been since Day 1 and I think I learned that early on at USC, that there's never any quit in a Trojan, so thankfully that's gone with me my entire career.
Q: What is your proudest career accomplishment?
A: At USC, it was winning the NCAA team title all four years. That's something that only one other tennis team had done, and we were able to accomplish that feat from 2009 to 2012.
Q: How did you win on your bad days to keep your 72-match win streak alive?
A: Every day I kept the streak alive, I didn't even think about it. My coaches and my teammates and everybody, we were all just one goal, one day, one match at a time. Just to continue that on. So I got lucky in that regard, and my coaches deserve a lot of credit.
Q: Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal?
A: That's a tough one. Fed and Rafa are both equally dominant in their respective careers, but for me, I've always got to go with Fed. He was and is, in my eyes, probably the greatest of all time in our sport.
Q: What was the best class you ever took at USC?
A: I forget which class it was, some communication class, but we had Louis Zamperini talk to us. And for me, what he represented and the Trojan that he was and everything he did, that was by far one of the coolest moments I had at USC in a class.
Q: Was it cool to have the Trojan Marching Band at your wedding?
A: Yeah, the Marching Band was a bit of a shock to both Kendall and myself, but to see them walking down, and we had a lot of teammates from our respective teams, to get down there and have the Fight Song going, it was crazy to see how far we'd come and celebrate the university that had given so much to us.
