Wessim Derbel was born for this, born to compete, to be there when his teammates need him. It's just in his nature.
Listen to Derbel, or the people close to him and you might find that the junior from La Marsa, Tunisia was born to do much more important things than play tennis.
"My dad is a cardiologist and what he does, helping people live, I think that is amazing," Derbel said.
So Derbel plans on taking the Medical College Admission Test, also known as the MCAT, in this his junior year at Nevada.
With the addition of the highly intensive exam to his 2011, Derbel is set for one heck of a year. On the court he will most likely play out of the No. 1 position for the Pack, and along with senior Kristian Kuharszky, is charged with leading the team back to the WAC Tournament.
"It's my job with Kristian to guide all the others," Derbel said. "I expect everybody to be hungry, everybody to play for each other."
And that's not all.
Derbel may travel home to his native Tunisia to prepare to be active in his third Davis Cup. The International tournament has been conducted for the last 110 years and is broken down into groups based on geography/size.
Tunisia, an African nation on the Mediterranean Sea, has drawn Great Britain in the first round in 2011.
That means that if Derbel is chosen to play in one of the first two singles matches for his country in this year's tournament, he may stare across the net at one of the best players in the world, Andy Murray.
Murray is currently ranked No. 5 in the world and is one of the best players to come out of the nation of Great Britain, a place Derbel described as "the temple of tennis," in years.
"It would be the highlight of my life, I'd drop everything to play a guy like that," Derbel said.
What would be the highlight of his tennis career might not seem like it relates to what Derbel has planned for after his days off the court, but one parallel can be drawn.
"The pressure," Derbel said. "Whether it's on the court or what I would like to do after, being a doctor, I love the pressure that comes with that stuff."
This season, with Nevada off to a 1-1 start, Derbel is trying to handle the pressure of being the teams on the court leader, of playing in the top spot against the opponent's best player.
The Pack were bounced from the WAC Tournament in the first round last season, a result that Derbel, Kuharszky and returning players Kyle Walker and Stefan Dmitrovic would like to change.
For now Derbel will stick with playing good tennis and building the confidence of the three freshmen that will see considerable action in 2011. Nathan Reix, Victor Ouvrard and Quentin Mege have a savvy veteran to look up to.
Soon he may be able to tell them what the game of one of the world's best looks like, but he will always be able to offer good advice on and off the court.
