Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We should reach out to people to try to go after the fans the way other sports do. Because we can't just depend on the fact that it is a great game.
I can't speak for other people, but I still hate losing. When I did lose, I found it easier to yell than to cry. Guys aren't supposed to cry, are they?
You're asking too much of the women. They shouldn't be playing as many events as men. If tennis is best served by women playing events with men, so be it.
Things slow down, the ball seems a lot bigger and you feel like you have more time. Everything computes - you have options, but you always take the right one.
I was a Yankee fan until 1981. That was the year the Yankees were two up on the Dodgers and lost four straight. And George Steinbrenner apologized to the city.
As I got older and started moving up the ranking, the matches got more important, and my emotions ratcheted up. I guess I hid my real feelings behind the anger.
Jack Nicholson didn't get anything until he was in his thirties. You have to persevere and put yourself in positions, and sooner or later, you will break through.
Borg's won Wimbledon four straight times and out there he has just lost an 18-16 tie breaker. You'd think maybe once he'd let up and say forget it. But oh, no way.
What is the single most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well.
When I was 15 and playing in Kalamazoo, I ran into a light pole on the side of the court and was knocked out for a little while - when I woke up, I was seeing stars!
Maybe I should have played two more Australians and two less Davis Cups? I could have had more majors and still have three Davis Cups when most people don't have one.
If you really want to get it more exciting, no linesmen. And have the players call their lines. That would make the game more exciting, I promise you. It would be awesome.
If you look at the top 100 players, you would see that the great majority of them have had at least a couple of surgeries. That tells me that we have to protect the players.
But these guys learn so fast now, they sort of soak up the information, they're fearless. Those are the guys who learn from their mistakes and come back strong the next time.
If, in a few months, I'm only number 8 or number 10 in the world, I'll have to look at what off-the-court work I can do. I will need to do something if I want to be number 1.
I would not have an event before the majors. I would build them up. It very rarely happens that a player plays the week before, wins the event, and then goes on to win the slam.
Equipment's the biggest change. And the guys have been getting bigger, stronger, more athletic - so the game has become more of a track meet instead of a tennis match, in a sense.
When I was eight and a half, my parents moved to a part of Queens where there was a club nearby. We joined, and if you believe in someone up above, I think I was meant to play tennis.
There's something deeply satisfying when it succeeds, but I'm not going to do another book just to put my name on something and make some money if it's not something I deeply care about.
Sometimes my negativity worked to my advantage, and early in my career, it got me going. But you need to understand that you're not just fighting opponents, you're also fighting yourself.
I havent seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.
I haven't seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.
If Roger stopped right now and never won another match, to me he'd already be one of the greatest players to ever play the game. To me, he's the greatest all around talent that I've ever seen.
I'm 56 years old. I like to get out on the court. I continue to try to play the best I can. Obviously, I'm nowhere near where I was when half this age. But I can still hit a pretty decent ball.
Nadal and Roger Federer have great respect for each other. I think Novak Djokovic gets under those two guys' skin a little bit, and maybe they don't want to admit it, and I think that's, in a way, healthy.
I don't think enough players channel the energy of the crowd. If it's done properly, and you don't let anger overwhelm and distract you, it's like a shot of adrenaline in the arm, and it gets the crowd pumped up.
Well I think that's probably one of a few, where I grew up in the City of New York, it's got a lot of energy, my parents are Irish-American so there was a bit of yelling going on in my house but it seemed normal.
Sitting there clapping and smiling... it's difficult. You're like, 'Don't worry about it, you just double faulted, you just played a really dumb point. Keep positive.' Then more clapping. That would annoy me as a player.
I used to take pride if my kids were playing basketball, and I'd be there, and I wouldn't say anything. People were obviously expecting me to yell and scream at the ref and at them and everything. I wouldn't say anything.
They would go back and listen to my matches, and two days later, I'd be fined. Because no one heard it while it was being played, but they heard it on some mic behind the court. Is that the way it should be? I don't think so.
When I felt I was rejected by my first wife, and she said, 'Some day you will thank me for this,' you know what? I do. And so, sometimes it is darkest before the dawn. You can think it is bleak and you can't see. You never know.
One of the things I respected about Connors was that one second he would be spewing a four-letter word, the next second he would do something that had people falling off the aisles. Yet he never seemed to lose his concentration.
When I came on the tour, I thought, 'Why don't they treat tennis players the same way they look at football players?' Because I've got news for you: when they are on the pitch, they are not saying, 'Hello, how are you?' out there.
I'd like to think I could have and should have won more, but that's not the point. And I was at the point where I was playing great tennis in the mid 80s - the type of tennis people hadn't seen before - and I was very proud of that.
They should be required to be in less events; there should be less events for the women. It seems it takes an actual meltdown on the court or women quitting the game altogether before they realize there's a need to change the schedule.
The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what's best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you're banging your head against a brick wall all the time.
There was a line call that didn't look so great. I went ballistic. Called the umpire a jerk. Whacked a ball into the stands. Then smacked a soda can with my racket, and got soda all over the King of Sweden, who was sitting in the front row.
If you watch a guy go out on court and have a meltdown, you're not going to think, 'Oh my God, now I'm screwed.' Or you're not going to think, 'The umpire's going to give him calls because he's just told him he's an idiot or the pits of the world.'
The 1980 Wimbledon final with Borg - that's the one I was most proud of to be part of. It's talked about as one of the best matches people have seen so that certainly elevated me in a lot of different ways, even though I came out second in that one.
It means a lot to be back in New York. Particularly since one of the last senior event scheduled in the States was supposed to be here in New York. We were supposed to play in Central Park right after 9-11 and when 9-11 happened obviously things changed.
I think the players, I put in the book for example that we should go back to wood rackets, probably they laughed at me, I'm a dinosaur, but I think that you see these great players, have even more variety and you see more strategy, there'd be more subtlety.
The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you're in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don't even know you can come up and just dump on you.
You hit a wall at some stage when you don't want it so bad, but you don't know when that's going to be - as far as competition or as far as health is concerned. Sometimes it's just natural. You just taste it, and you want it so bad that you find other gears.
What I've realised is that you can run miles, jump on a bike, lift weights, and all that other garbage, but the bottom line is that you get in tennis shape by playing tennis. You build the right muscles, and I don't believe people can do it as successfully any other way.
I went to play in Brazil when I had just turned 18 and was the world's top junior player. I got to the airport, and no one knew who I was. I couldn't speak any Portuguese, and no one spoke English. Then someone said something that resembled 'tennis,' and I went with that.
The best thing I ever did was when I was offered a million dollars to go play in South Africa and didn't take it. I was 21 years old, and part of it was like, 'Well, if they're offering me this obscene amount of money just to play one match, there must be something really wrong.'
The best way I knew how was to give 110% and want it more than them, and walk on the court and every moment of the match feel like it was the end of the world, in a sense. So that worked for me in a lot of ways. There were times that it hurt me, but for the most part, it helped me.
It's one thing if you live in London and you're rooting for Chelsea or you're in New York and you love the Giants or Jets and no matter who's on the team you're into it. It's different in tennis; you're sort of your own guy, so you have to reach out and grab a person in a different way.
I was a different kind of player as a kid and didn't do too much shouting and screaming. If things didn't go my way, I tended to get a bit overwhelmed. All I wanted to do was cry on my mom's shoulder. I didn't know how to handle defeat in front of a crowd, and I didn't want to be the loser.
I don't really know why I started playing as a kid, but I grew up in Queens, New York, not too far from Forest Hills, where they played the U.S. Open in those days. I even got to be a ball boy there. Also, there was a tennis court just a block away from our house, and I'd hang out down there.