If you don't practice you don't deserve to win.
What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose.
Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work
It's no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice.
Tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love - the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature.
Freed from the thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, start feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic.
If I don't do what I need to do to win, I won't win, no matter who is on the other side of the net.
The great part about tennis is you can't run out the clock.... As long as we were still playing, I had a chance.
Being number two sucks.
I'm going to have to pick my shots and play great tennis.
You'll hear a lot of applause in your life, but none will mean more to you than that applause from your peers. I hope each of you hears that at the end.
No athletes talk to themselves like tennis players. Pitchers, golfers, goalkeepers, they mutter to themselves, but tennis players talk to themselves-and answer. Tennis players look like lunatics in a public square.
Sex doesn't interfere with your tennis; it's staying out all night trying to find it that affects your tennis.
I always felt tennis and winning was a byproduct of doing everything right.
My feelings are Yevgeny Kafelnikov should take his prize money when he is done here and go and buy some perspective.
My only good result in 1997 was marrying Brooke Shields.
Now that I've won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last long as the bad. Not even close.
First of all, let me say, 1:15 in the morning, for 20,000 people to still be here, I wasn't the winner, tennis was. That's awesome. I don't know if I've ever felt so good here before.
Tennis is the loneliest sport.
But, I would say when I was four years old and I was at the Alan King Tennis Tournament and I was hitting with all the pros that would come to town. They would get me on the court or take notice and that stayed with me.
It has meant a lot to me to challenge the best players in the world and to beat them. And it means a lot to me to be out here and fighting for the title and, you know, it hurts not to win it.
If Pete’s (Sampras) child is a girl, my son will like her; if he’s a boy, my son will defeat him.
First of all, in any sport where you can measure distance, height speed and all of that, you see how athletes have changed their sport and made it better. I believe, with every generation, the sport has improved. Certainly, in the men's game, that has been the case. I think that I played Pete [Sampras] at his best, I played Roger [Federer] at his best.. I believe wholeheartedly that Roger and [Rafael] Nadal have pushed the game much further than myself or Pete ever did. Their options on the tennis court are considerably more than ours.
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.
Tennis is at an amazing time when you've got two of the best players ever to play the game. You can argue the two very best playing in the same generation. It's a rivalry I think that we've never seen in our sport.
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