How the drive to impact people motivates Frances Tiafoe on the tennis court and off

Frances Tiafoe has already achieved his fair share of success on the tennis court, whether that was breaking into the world's Top 10 or reaching the US Open semifinals.

"You have nothing else to prove to anyone," Nick Kyrgios begins on the latest episode of "Good Trouble with Nick Kyrgios," where the gregarious American is his guest.

Yes, the 26-year-old responds ... but his true calling is only beginning.

"When little kids wanted to be like you, you start realizing it’s some much bigger than you," he said. "Giving them a chance to play the game. Winning titles, winning matches is great. Everyone wants to do that, but there's always something bigger."

After speaking with actor Rainn Wilson, media personalities Gordon Ramsay and Jemele Hill and others over the opening five episodes, Kyrgios returns to his sporting roots for the sixth installment with world No. 21 Tiafoe, his first peer to guest star on the video podcast show. (Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka are slated to appear in subsequent episodes later this spring.)

Over the course of 22 minutes, Kyrgios and Tiafoe bond over their mirror roles as on-court entertainers, the belief that diversity in tennis is important for the sport's growth, and their shared philanthropic endeavors. For Tiafoe, that comes in the form of the Frances Tiafoe Fund in partnership with the USTA Foundation, which helps to benefit tennis and education programs for under-served youth.

Tiafoe's desire to make a difference stems from the inspiring story of his humble beginnings, which saw him and his twin brother, Franklin, cram in their father's small office at the Junior Tennis Champions' Center in College Park, Md., where he took a job as head of maintenance after immigrating to the U.S. from the African nation of Sierra Leone.

Sometimes, Tiafoe said, they even slept on massage tables while their father slept in his office, as his mother worked nights as a nurse.

"I'm like, 'I'm going to win the US Open one day, I'm going to be a pro, I'm going to take everybody,'" Tiafoe recalled of that time. "Frank was always like, 'Man, you can do it,' as we're 8, 11, you know, that kind of age."

Now, as a global superstar, Tiafoe says wants to give back to the place that raised him, and dare kids like him to dream big.

The goal is to give youth, "in the DMV area, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and P.G. County [Prince George's County], where I'm from, just to give people who look like me a chance to play the game, go to schools, give racquets and have them play where I grew up playing ... to bring them [into] something new and have them be accessible to," he said.

"I'm super excited to see where this can go and slowly after that, grow it across the country, Tiafoe added. "Obviously I’d like to see where this goes. ... [To] see a little kid come up to you like, 'I just want to be just like you,' that hits totally different."

His mindset also changed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he decided "to just stop listening to all the outside noise and just do me." By freeing himself from expectations, Tiafoe concludes, he was able to find his authentic self on and off the court, and that a colorful array of personalities like his can only make tennis more appealing.

"It's such a domino effect. I mean, you see what Chris Eubanks did at Wimbledon. Guys like that, that only helps the game. You [can] have a guy that would never watch tennis, ever tap in, because of person of color playing," he said.

"Diversity in sports is huge, especially in a predominately white sport and people doing it with swag. People thinking the game is cool and 'I can actually do this.' So it means a lot to me that seeing a guy like him go for a run, it means a lot to me for the game I love.

"We need more of that ... for the game to move forward."