I often speak about tennis being one of the most important sports when I was growing up, for my hand-eye coordination and quick feet.
I felt sad because everyday I had to wake up early to practice before going to school. After school I had to go back to tennis again, and then after tennis I had homework. I didn’t have time to play.
It’s a pity that the tennis is really going down the drain. Every year it’s getting worse and worse and worse. There has to be a radical change, and I hope it will be really soon.
I dance a lot and I run and do yoga and play field hockey and tennis. I like to be active. I don’t always have time for that stuff, but I do always feel better afterward.
I did realise more than ever, after the stabbing, that tennis is a business – a tough business.
Tennis is a mental game. Everyone is fit, everyone hits great forehands and backhands.
I am here to play women’s tennis. I’m a lady. Predominantly, most of the time I always like to play ladies.
When I’m playing football, it’s what I know; it’s what I’m good at. The spotlight is not just on you: you’re with 10 of your team-mates. I could have done other sports, like tennis and athletics, but I like being part of a team where it’s not just about you; it’s about everybody.
The kids know what I’m doing when I exercise, and that’s powerful. So don’t just tell your kids to go play outside. Take a moment off your computer, put on your tennis shoes, hop outside and help them start their game and run off some energy.
I will do everything in my power to make sure people are aware that our team is out there fighting the good fight for the tennis fans of the United States.
Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.
I don’t have time for easy. Tennis is just hard.
I’m an ardent tennis player. I’m like an overenthusiastic child out there and I’ve damaged my back. It’s not that it’s crippling pain, more mental anguish.
Each weekend I play at least one and maybe two sets of tennis a day. My doubles team was in the finals recently at my tennis club in Palm Beach and lost a tiebreaker after a three-hour match. I must confess, by the end of the three hours, I was relieved it was over.
As a tennis player you can win and you can lose, and you have to be ready for both. I practised self-control as a kid. But as you get older they both – winning and losing – get easier.
Tennis players need to be very focused and very intense, and I can show tennis players are not just hitting the little yellow ball and moving in between the white lines. I’m always trying to show my personality outside of the court.
We didn’t have football boots, and we used a broken tennis ball instead of a football. I didn’t use a proper ball until I was 11.
I like watching tennis and basketball, but it’s not every day you can watch it on TV. I don’t play them, though.
It’s true I always try to be as seductive as possible but I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t play tennis.
When I’m playing well because of my serve and trying to keep points shorter, I don’t need to worry about my opponent. All I need to do is focus on myself and have them adjust to me rather than me adjust to them. That’s when I play my best tennis.
Growing up, I did quite a bit of reading on the mental side. My dad, who coached me, had us doing a lot of different types of mental work, like visualization. I read a couple of tennis books that talked about calming your nerves, belief, visualization, relaxing, breathing.
There is no shortcuts. Play your best tennis, give your heart out, and anything can happen.
You can’t underestimate rest. Sometimes in tennis we don’t realize that to rest your body is as important as it is to practice. We are traveling so much, all year, in different conditions, different courts, different surfaces, different balls – so we always have to adapt.
I’m not saying I’m something special. I might play a little better tennis than other people, but it is because I was given the chance, and not many people are.
Every good tennis player has to have a short memory. Good or bad.
Many tennis coaches are enablers. They need the job more than the player needs the coach, and if the coach needs the job more than the player needs the coach, he can’t effect change.
I’m a decent table tennis player, but if you were to put me up against any of the guys you see on television at the Olympics, I’d be lucky to get a couple of points.
I have always been guided by striving to show the best that I could. That is what kept me going in tennis and it is the same now.
I get up at 4:30 A.M. pretty much every morning during the week. I work out for an hour and a half. I do weights and I ride the bike, I run or I play tennis. It’s my release.
My father actually moved out from Chicago just so he could play tennis 365 days a year, so it was – it was a place we played every day. We played before school. We played after school. We woke up. We played tennis. We brushed our teeth in that order.
I love tennis more than designing because it’s actually easier and I don’t get nearly as nervous.
I used to be a columnist for ‘Golf Monthly’ and have contributed articles for national newspapers based on the humour that is in abundance in the game, which is more than can be said of tennis.
In tennis, there is the forehand, the backhand, the overhead smash and the drop volley, all with a different grip.
In the States, tennis is sixth or seventh on the totem pole as far as sports go.
My tennis skills are okay.
I just feel like it would be so against my personality to have this struggle in tennis and just give up. I know it’s not me, not who I am, and that would probably affect other parts of my life.
In a perfect world, my tennis game gets better. I have kids and a beautiful wife and live on some hill somewhere that’s not in Los Angeles. And the script that Tom Hanks just barely turned down gets in my hands.
I always ran very fast and jumped very high but when I was about thirteen it was more of a choice between football and tennis, and I went for tennis.
Tennis is a big puzzle. It’s not any more physical or mental; you have to have all the pieces first, and then you have to put all the pieces together. For me, it took me time.
I think people have this love-hate relationship with tennis. I also feel like that.
I play golf, but sometimes it’s so un-relaxing, I have to play tennis to wind down. Now that I think about it, this process is sort of like when I go out for sushi and have to get a slice of pizza afterward.
Coming from a country that loves tennis, actually, there are a lot of people who play. We definitely face a lot of challenges when it comes to producing tennis players.
I go from being not known to being so known in the tennis world, in Canada in general. It’s going to be a little bit of a change to me. I’m going to have to adapt. But that doesn’t change things. I still have to work really hard every day.
If you’re playing someone you care about, it’s tough, and I don’t want to be in that situation. We are playing big matches for big points and prize money, and I take it very seriously. I relax when I’m outside tennis.
Right now I like baseball, hockey and tennis players. And horseback riders.
It was very hard for me to practice and enjoy my tennis, and I didn’t know the why, so I worked with psychologists to try and see what was happening. They pushed me really hard.
You’re the only one in control over your golf ball. It’s not like tennis: you’re hitting a shot and somebody’s hitting it back at you.
I don’t play tennis at all.
One of the best sayings in tennis and sport is that pressure is a privilege.
Tennis was a particularly interesting growing-up experience. It’s actually a difficult way of growing up because it’s such an individual sport. It taught me a lot of life lessons that have been helpful later in my life.
Men can have a huge turnover of sponsorship and still survive a lot better than the women. But the women’s ratings are better, at least at home in the United States than in the men’s tennis.
I like lots of different sport, and I was always the type of lad that plays a lot of sport as well. I’ve played basketball; I’m not bad at tennis.
I’d like to live a normal life. I’d like to be able to go out and play some tennis. I’d like to be able to water ski – do a lot of things.
I always try to have something that keeps my mind relaxed, keeps my mind a little bit off tennis.
Tennis is my life, obviously; I need to focus, I need to win. But it’s not the only thing. I’m not going to play forever.
Tennis is one of those sports: whatever you put in, you get out.
When I started to play tennis my mum told me to enjoy.
I think the tennis is only a game. You can lose. You can win. After that? In life, there are much more important things than tennis.
There’s a lot of things I want to do. I want to learn Italian. I want to learn to play tennis better. I want to motivate the world, basically.
My parents did everything possible. My dad has worked from eight in the morning until nine in the evening to make it possible so I can play tennis. We had to cancel tournaments because we couldn’t afford to go there.
