Inside Ajaeze Onu’s Bold Pivot to Pro Tennis
A casual hobby spinned into an obsession.
Black News 
Pivoting careers is terrifying enough for the average person. Choosing to step away from a thriving music career — where an identity as an artiste, dancer and entertainer has been established since age 15 — to chase a dream in professional tennis is a different level of audacity.
This audacity is just a standard operating procedure for Ajaeze Onu, popularly known as Ajaeze.
While the world knew him for his stage presence, he already had sports in his DNA. He was already on the basketball court at age five. But the plot twist came in August 2024, when he picked up a tennis racket for the first time. It was first a casual hobby, then it spinned into an obsession.
By October, after realising he had a natural feel for the ball, Ajaeze made a life-altering call to go all in on professional tennis. “I never knew how difficult the sport actually is and how much of a grind it is,” he admits.
Instead of letting the learning curve scare him off, the complexity of the game hooked him. Without wasting time, he initially locked in training under Coach Muhammed at Ikoyi Tennis Club and also Coach Tareem Heath, but then… his first three competitive tournaments ended in defeat, so he stepped back from match play to rebuild his technique from the ground up. Ajaeze is now training with ATP professional Coach Mark Oljaca, Coach Muhammed, and Coach Tareem Heath and is sure to make the progress he is reaching for.
Today, his schedule is punishing. He’s on court training twice a day, six days a week, plus three days of heavy strength work. The leap from studio recordings to court is incredible and uncommon, but to Ajaeze, it’s just day one. And both worlds demand the same relentless physical and mental discipline.
Whether you’re making a hit song or refining a top-spin forehand, you need the courage to keep showing up in every room until the work pays off.
“I need to do the work every day like I’m going to be the number one player in the world,” Ajaeze says. “And as long as I do that intentionally, I’ll be satisfied with whatever happens.”
Chasing the global top spot is a hard dream, but not an impossible one. History belongs to the people bold enough to re-invent themselves in plain sight. Ajaeze Onu is already proving that the next chapter can always be bigger than the last.
