U.S. Davis Cup captain Mardy Fish on mental health: "I was hoping to give people a success story"

WATCH: Mardy Fish has become quite the golfer in his post-(tennis) playing days.

On the court as U.S. Davis Cup captain, Mardy Fish led his team to victory over Colombia in Reno, Las Vegas. Off the court, he's become a mental health leader.

Fish's playing career was affected by anxiety, which he did not fully reveal while he was playing but discussed in a 2021 Netflix documentary called Untold: Breaking Point.

"I certainly have thousands of messages, whether through social media, through Twitter, through emails, texts, whatever," said Fish, ranked as high as No. 7 in 2011, before this week's Davis Cup tie. "It's been overwhelming, the response, in a good way.

“I set out to try and tell my story to give people a success story in the mental health world, show people a vulnerable side of a human being, that their job was completely taken away from them due to some sort of mental health issues. Not only was I able to get through it and beat it and get to the other side, I was able to jump back into sort of the fire of competing at a high level at the place that took it all away from me.

"When I went through it, I wasn't aware of any sort of success stories in sports. I was a sports fan. I didn't know any scenarios where I could lean on to say, 'Oh, there's an athlete or a person that I know of that went through something similar and was able to get through it.' I was hoping to give people a success story for that."

It is something Fish himself didn't have while he was playing, and took a number of breaks from the game as he considered whether to keep his career going.

"It was important for me, if I was going to tell my story, to tell it as a success story, to give people hope that they can get through any sort of mental health issues they have, whether it be depression, panic, anxiety, bipolar. There's a lot of stuff that people deal with, tens of millions of Americans deal with on a daily basis."

In his three years as Davis Cup captain, Fish has concentrated on rebuilding the team with younger players, after the tight-knit group of Andy Roddick, James Blake and Bob and Mike Bryan—which won the Davis Cup in 2007—gradually left the sport.

At this tie against Colombia, Fish picked Taylor Fritz, Sebastian Korda, Tommy Paul, Jack Sock and experienced doubles player Rajeev Ram.

"It's why I wanted to be in this position. I took the job in with the goal of building a team, coming in at a time when guys had stopped playing, myself, James, Andy, the Bryans. It's a good time to reset, to build team chemistry."

The U.S. has won the Davis Cup more times than other nation, but its most recent victory was in 2007. The Americans swept Colombia, 4-0, to reach the Davis Cup final stage.