Welcome to the latest instalment of Nicolas Mejia’s blog. Nico brought down the curtain on his junior career in 2018 and won two titles during his first full year as a professional. He also made his Davis Cup debut for Colombia against Argentina in 2018. He was a Grand Slam Development Fund player grant recipient in 2020 and will be writing regular pieces for the ITF, providing insight into his tennis journey. Follow his progress here.

What a difference a few weeks can make. Before competing at the first Salinas Challenger in Ecuador where I came through qualifying and reached the final, I was really, really struggling and in no form whatsoever.

Prior to posting a much-needed match-win at the Cleveland Challenger in mid-March, I lost six successive first-round matches. Never in my life, since I started playing tennis, has that happened before and it was one of the toughest times I have faced.

It was extremely difficult, but I was lucky that I had some great people around me. My coach Juan Mateus was as supportive as ever, while I was fortunate during that time to travel with James Allemby and Daniel Armengol, coaches from the Rafa Nadal Academy, and they were key for me.

It is not often that you get to travel with two coaches who share the same passion for tennis as you and I am extremely grateful to the academy and to those guys for sticking by me, cheering me on and helping me through such a tricky spell.

On the practice court during this period, we were training ten times harder than usual. Even when the day was finishing, we would take some baskets and hit more and more balls. In fact, I was training my backside off.

But it was also important to put things into perspective. Tennis is a tough sport and you either win or you lose. There are no draws and unless you win the tournament, you are always going to experience defeat during any given week.

It was also important to understand that having returned from injury and with quarantining restrictions, it wasn’t always possible to train properly in the immediate run up to a tournament. While I wanted results to come, circumstances didn’t always allow for perfect preparation.

There is also a mental side to poor form and I was helped by the fact I was still competing in finals and semi-finals in doubles events, mainly in Antalya, alongside my partner Pedro Vives Marcos of Spain.

Fighting for titles helped a lot and kept the competitive side of things going, while it also meant I didn’t have to wait a whole week to just play, and potentially lose, another round.

To some extent, I also learnt to forget about what was happening when I was outside of the court and that was important. I worked out that my ability to have fun and build great relationships with friends is not dependent on results. There is a life outside of tennis.

Perhaps at the back of my mind I was still thinking, ‘I’m losing, I’m losing, I’m losing’, but having the right people around me and focusing on things other than tennis certainly helped free my thoughts.

But throughout the difficult results, Juan and others were telling me that a lot of the matches I was losing were tough three-setters and on a different day could have gone my way. They were right and, in the end, that is exactly what happened.

In my first-round match in Salinas, against home favourite Diego Hidalgo, I recovered from a break down in the third set to win, while in the quarter-finals against Marcelo Tomas Barrios Vera of Chile I saved two match points in the third.

I would obviously have loved to have won the final against Chile’s Nicolas Jarry, who I also lost to on Friday in the quarter-finals of the second Challenger event in Salinas. Nevertheless, within a week, everything had changed and to do it at Challenger level was massive for me.

My ranking went from No. 465 to No. 342, which means I can play a lot more Challenger events but, more than that, it was a much-needed confidence boost and vital to turn the tide of disappointment.

I was also very grateful to receive congratulatory messages from some of my friends on Tour, the likes of Sebastian Korda and Michael Mmoh, who realised how much that week meant to me.

For the rest of my career, I very much hope I never again experience six successive first-round defeats. As such, coming through a very tough quarter-final after all that had happened was very emotional and I dedicated the win to my father on Instagram.

I am going to speak more about the passing of my father, Gustavo, in my next blog piece, but it’s just really hard not to have his presence in my life. He was my mentor, he introduced me to tennis and he was the one who took me to practice as a kid.

He was the proudest person in the world whenever I was winning and I just know that over recent months he would have been saying, ‘work hard, work things out for yourself and the results will come’.

He would have been jumping for joy seeing me come through some tough matches and beat some very decent players at a Challenger. It’s hard not having him around and it will be like that for my entire career, but he will be watching from upstairs.

It still feels surreal to talk about my father and him not be here. He is always in my dreams and in my thoughts and that’s God’s way of telling me that he is there, watching over me.

It may only have been an appearance in a final – and I have bigger ambitions – but after the last few months that run in Salinas was so much more than that and it was important for me to dedicate it to my father.

I am certainly playing and feeling a lot better than I was. Hopefully, the positive results are here to stay.