Christopher Eubanks had a common initial reaction on the morning of Aug. 20, 2024. 

“I woke up and saw the news. I was pretty shocked, like everyone else,” Eubanks told The Second Serve in an interview this week at the Australian Open. 

Jannik Sinner, the recently installed ATP No. 1, had just been revealed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) to have tested positive for the banned substance clostebol; that revelation was made simultaneously to the announcement that an independent tribunal had already ruled that Sinner bore “no fault or negligence” for the positive tests for the substance, which he had explained was transmitted to him unintentionally from his massage therapist’s finger. 

A No. 1-ranked player testing positive was an unprecedented shock that sent ripples and whispers through the sport. But while others around tennis started talking, Eubanks started reading.  

“I wanted to prepare in the event that I, as a current player, was going to be asked about it,” Eubanks said. “And so I took it upon myself to read all 33 pages of the report. A few passages I had to reread multiple times to try to get an understanding of it.”

Eubanks was preparing both as a player and as a commentator for ESPN, whom he worked for for the duration of the US Open after being eliminated from the draw.  

Eubanks wasn’t ultimately asked about the case in a press conference or on-air, but the topic of doping rules and procedures had his “interest already piqued” when the topic popped up again at the top of a tennis ladder.

“Then Iga’s case comes about: another ITIA case,” Eubanks said of Iga Swiatek’s positive test for trimetazidine, revealed on Thanksgiving Day. “And again, because of preparation for doing Tennis Channel a few months later, I wanted to try to educate myself as much as possible on the facts of the case.”

Eubanks read not only the decision in the Swiatek case, but the procedural rules outlined in the 2024 Tennis Anti-Doping Programme.

“I wanted to cross-reference with an actual reading of the rule from the rule book so that I had a good understanding of it,” Eubanks said. “And then it just kind of went from there. Once I kind of got going in it, I was really, really invested in it. For me, I just wanted to make sure I had a good understanding of the facts of the case and [wasn’t] just allowing what I read on social media to dictate my perception of it.”

The more he became well-versed in the topic and its literature, the more Eubanks winced when hearing others misrepresent the facts of the cases. He chalked up the persistence of misinformation to “the time in which we live now.” 

“It was a bit, I would say, disheartening, to see things said publicly that—based on my understanding of the rules at the time—just weren’t factual,” Eubanks said. “They just weren’t true.”

One voice Eubanks did listen to—and retweet—was Richard Ings, a former tennis chair umpire who later headed the ATP’s original anti-doping operation and later the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA). 

“I like to say that I’m smart enough to listen to people who are smarter than me,” Eubanks said. “And so, because Richard has the background in it, he was one of the people that I looked to on social media to give some type of insight.”

As he gained his own literacy in the topic, Eubanks was frequently able to correct and educate his fellow players in conversations, like when they repeatedly said that Sinner must have done something wrong to have had his points and prize money from Indian Wells—the tournament at which his positive tests occurred—voided. 

“I tried to reiterate that that is a procedural rule,” Eubanks said. “That has to happen anytime you have an adverse analytical finding from an in-competition sample. That’s not a discretionary thing…. I think that was one of the more frustrating ones because I’d be like, ‘Guys, it’s in the report! It’s, like, right there! You can go back and look in the actual rule book and see. Come on, guys. It’s clearly written in black and white.’”

Eubanks even became versed in more obscure precedents in order to corroborate and defend the handling of the high-profile cases.

“They would ask me, ‘Well, do you think this would have happened if it hadn’t been Jannik Sinner?’” Eubanks said. “And my response was: It happened to Marco Bortolotti. His ITIA report is right there, easily accessible, and you can look it up. He tested positive on an in-competition sample at the end of the year in 2023. He was notified in either January or February. He submitted his response; he was allowed to continue playing, and then they eventually ruled it ‘No fault or negligence.’ It was the same exact process—minus obviously a lot of details because of how the clostebol got into Sinner’s system. But by and large, this process was the exact same. And when I mentioned Bortolotti, most of the players just don’t know. And I had never heard of Marco Bortolotti, and I’m playing out here. So I would oftentimes send them the report and go, ‘Read it! It’s the exact same, and it’s a lot shorter than Sinner’s.’”

Because of the unprecedented pair of high-profile cases in recent months, the ITIA arranged two open-door informational sessions at the Australian Open last weekend. Eubanks, who had lost in the final round of qualifying and was waiting to see if he might be able to get into the main draw as a lucky loser, was the only player to attend.

Adrian Bassett, director of communications for the ITIA, was struck not only by Eubanks’ presence, but by his preparedness: Eubanks arrived to the meeting with the PDFs of the decisions downloaded and annotated on his iPad, and a list of questions pre-written. 

“I don’t think you would naturally expect that from players,” Bassett said of Eubanks. “But it’s great that he did. He was engaged, and they were all sensible questions. And I hope we gave him sensible answers that helped his understanding of it. We’re always open to talking to players and answering their questions. But it definitely stood out.” 

Seeing his intellectual rigor and attention to detail, I asked Eubanks if he perhaps planned on something like law school after his tennis-playing career ends.

“No, no, no, no,” Eubanks insisted. “Way too much work. I would gladly just take the way that I am into other walks in my life. And whatever I choose to do, I’ll probably have that same kind of diligent approach to it.”