Mardy Fish tells the New York Times that he is frequently wearing a heart monitor when he goes to sleep, as it puts him mentally at ease. Fish underwent a heart procedure in Los Angeles on May 23 in an attempt to resolve a form of arrhythmia. "I still have it, and sometimes when I feel a little uneasy or feel like, in my mind maybe I’m going to convince myself to have a bad night or something, I’ll put it on and it makes me feel a lot more comfortable," Fish said. "Sometimes, I just put it on."
Fish also said that the night after losing to Juan Monaco in Miami, his heart was racing so fast while he laid in bed that he began to panic.
"I honestly felt in Miami like I was going to die,” Fish said. "I had just read that story about that soccer player [Fabrice Muamba, who collapsed on the field after a cardiac arrest during a match, but eventually survived]. “It’s pumping so hard, like out of my chest, beating so hard. If I were to just drop everything and just do a full sprint outside the grounds here at Wimbledon, that’s how fast it was going."
The American will play at Wimbledon, the first time he has competed since early April. Fish reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals last year and thinks he made the right choice to return at the All England Club. "I feel like this is the perfect surface for me to come back on,” Fish said. “It’s not as physically taxing. They don’t play as long points."