I think, for me, I just really want to have fun with every match that I play because tennis is a game.
I like putting money back into what made my life, and tennis has been great to me.
I always had a powerful serve. It’s one of the best in women’s tennis. It’s very good to have a weapon like that.
I follow tennis, and I actually went to Wimbledon during the summer, and it was nice to get a day off during pre-season to watch it. Basketball as well – I don’t have a team; it’s just a casual interest – especially when the play-offs come around and the intensity rises.
I don’t have too much spare time, but I try to play games as much as possible. I played a little growing up, but I never played any tennis games before.
I feel like my whole life only tennis.
We play a lot of tennis, and we work out at the gym three or four times a week. As you get older, you feel those aches and pains, so Advil’s become a friend in the house.
When I retired from tennis I wanted to do other things with my life.
I stumbled into tennis.
The responsibility I have is a great thing, from helping tennis grow in Canada, but also in the future, being able to do stuff through my foundation, helping kids, and helping everyone I can, and really trying to make a difference. It would be a shame to be in the spotlight, have a voice and not do much with it.
Tennis is all about mental toughness, and you have to keep your head in the game. I make time to relax away from competition pressures, travel and intense training schedules to make sure I’m looking after myself. Taking time out with family and friends helps to maintain the work-life balance everyone needs.
Tennis is a small window. You’re not going to have unlimited chances, unlimited opportunities. You can’t waste time.
I don’t mind fans coming up in a friendly, respectful way. That’s all part of the fun of being a top tennis player. But if people take pictures without permission, particularly if my children are in the shot, I feel uncomfortable.
The tennis ball doesn’t know how old I am. The ball doesn’t know if I’m a man or a woman or if I come from a communist country or not. Sport has always broken down these barriers.
Tennis is a great platform for me to do well, and for sure, I want to be No 1, to win Slams, but there are more things that I want to do.
Besides surfing, I play tennis, volleyball, I swim, I run hills, or I do high-intensity, high-interval workouts. I’m up at 5 A.M. every day.
Well, I think, you know, the university and the high schools are also important, but depends how I’m going to do in tennis – well, I hope. I mean, it depends, so I don’t know yet.
It’s very expensive to be a professional tennis player with all the travel and the flights and the hotels and everything.
To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.
When you’re with another actor and doing something very intense, often you pull them over to your side, or they pull you over to theirs. But if you stay in your own truth, you can play that perfect tennis match. I always want to bring my power, but not in a way that eliminates the whole game!
To be honest, everything in my life outside of tennis is great. I’m doing amazing projects that, if I didn’t have time off, I wouldn’t be able to focus on.
I’m not a team sports person type person, so I probably would have been good at tennis, because I like tennis. But my parents really didn’t push me. I think if my parents would have guided me and stay committed, I could have played any sport I wanted to, but I never did.
Once you succeed in tennis, financially you become quite well off.
I’ve been playing tennis, and just whatever sport is in front of me I will do.
Navratilova won an astounding 167 singles titles and 166 doubles titles in a career which has spanned nearly 30 years. She changed the game of women’s tennis by forcing opponents to reach her standards of fitness and athleticism.
When I committed to playing a little tennis in some exhibitions, it was the best thing for me. It got me in shape. It got me out of the house. It got me doing something I love to do.
I play tennis because I like it.
In the pros, tennis is all about individuals. In college, it’s getting individuals to make points for the team.
If I hadn’t become a chef I would have loved to be a top tennis player, although I was never good enough so it wasn’t really an option. But that has never dimmed my love of the game, which started in childhood when I was lucky enough to be a ball boy at Wimbledon.
Tennis is pretty unforgiving if you are carrying weight. You are expected to wear short skirts, and you are compared to all these 16 and 17-year-olds.
I found out how I missed tennis through the period I didn’t play. It was a difficult time to watch girls playing on the TV, me sitting on the sofa with the hand in a splint. I find out then how I love this sport.
That’s what I love about tennis: As an individual sport, you can’t hide behind teammates.
In the history of women’s tennis the great players have come back from long absences with no problems.
When I’m sitting at home in the off season and I don’t have anything to do, I watch tennis on my computer. It’s kind of boring. It’s something to do.
I lived in Hollywood long enough to learn to play tennis and become a star, but I never felt it was my home. I was never looking for a home, as a matter of fact.
There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.
It’s important to understand that you have to dedicate time to your sponsors, to have relationships with the people and the media, but it is also hard when you are first coming up and your primary focus is on tennis.
I won’t admit to having a poster of Borg on my bedroom door. But I certainly found him to be someone who got me way more into tennis.
My dad was a professional basketball player, and my mom was a hell of a tennis player.
I like to keep fit, and when not gardening or singing solo or in a choir, I cycle, play tennis, swim, dance, and practise yoga.
I do play tennis, but I don’t really like competition. I’m supposed to be so intense, but I hate competition.
For players from every age and every ability, the USTA National Campus will raise the bar on how we deliver tennis with the goal of making our great sport more accessible to more people than ever before.
The first three years, I don’t think I would leave my hotel room outside of tennis, because I was like, ‘I got to rest, I got to rest.’ It was like sort of a paranoia to do everything as best as I can.
As tempting as it seems to wear tennis shoes with your tux, don’t do it. I think it looks ridiculous. If you’re 14 years old, maybe give it a shot. In general, don’t portray anything that says ‘I’m too cool and I don’t care.’
I would like to learn so many things: I’d like to take tennis classes, I’d like continuing vocal lessons, and I’d definitely like taking more ice skating and more tap.
On winter Sundays when I was a child, we waited for my father to return from his tennis game with bagels and sturgeon and for my mother to object when the 1 P.M. Giants game began.
Professional tennis has become an extremely physical and unbelievably competitive sport. Injuries are the bane of tennis players, and it goes with the territory.
It’s good when you’re out there on a tennis court. There’s nowhere to hide. It’s all you, tactically, physically, mentally.
Tennis has been around for so long – women have been playing the majors since the 1800s. Other sports have not had professional leagues for women for as long.
I’d rather be able to play great tennis at a slam than make eight finals of little tournaments and then lose first round of a slam. That doesn’t sound too good.
I used to play rugby, polo, tennis, and cricket in school. It was only in the 1990s, when I used to live just opposite Harrods in London, that I started putting on weight. I used to have my breakfast there every day.
When I came to Spain, I joined a tennis academy, and that was where I learnt the game.
I get my drive and determination from just winning and playing tennis. I know if I don’t work, I won’t get rewarded. It was a life long dream to win a Grand Slam so when I was able to do that it felt so good and I wanted to do it again. It’s not that hard to stay motivated.
If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.
