Roscoe Tanner has led a heavily dramatic life after his retirement. The 1977 Australian Open winner has been in and out of jail several times. The American has been married and divorced thrice. He is also a father to five children in total. Tanner recently opened up about how his life spiraled. A major of which resulted from his incessant need to please people.

Tanner has had a long drawn out relationship with the law. Unfortunately for him, he was always on the losing end of it. He has been arrested in 1992, 1997, 2003 and many more times due to several reasons. His crimes included theft, failure of writing a valid cheque, not paying child support and more. However, he is focusing on improving himself and righting his wrongs.

Roscoe Tanner is a people pleaser

In the podcast titled, ‘The Craig Shapiro Tennis Podcast’, Tanner opened up about his troubled life. The host asked him whether the problems started after he retired. He worked as a commentator for ESPN and did corporate work. Tanner said the trouble started a few years after he hung up the racquet.

Tanner further elaborated that, as an athlete, the mindset of wanting to do something sets in. One needs to understand that sometimes one can’t do whatever they want. Tanner explained this mentality with an example.

He explained that if he ever had to do anything for his wife or any of his children, he would go out of his way to make sure that it was done. Tanner said he should’ve thought about it more and said a firm no to the things that were difficult to achieve.

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“Well, if there was something I wanted to do something for one of my ex-wives, or my children, if I wanted to get them something, I would go the extra mile to do it and I should’ve just said no I can’t and what happened was I’d do things that I shouldn’t and I can say it was for the best of reasons, but it wasn’t. I shouldn’t have done it, and I got in trouble for it.”

Tanner hates gambling

Tanner also said in the podcast that gambling was a pet peeve of his. He even went on to claim that some articles painted him as a gambler. He hated gambling because he abhorred losing more than winning. The former Wimbledon finalist recounted his experience with an ex-wife of his who loved to gamble.

“One article said that I was a gambler, and what people don’t realize is I hate gambling, ’cause I detested losing more than I liked winning. Not at all. I have an ex-wife that loved to gamble and so she wanted to gamble all the time and I wouldn’t even go in. I loved going to the buffet restaurant and just having dinner.”

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Roscoe Tanner has remained clean in the last few years. The retired American player is looking to turn his life around and he seems to be on the right track.