Tennis Quotations

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.

I am not one of those people who lives for work. I enjoy sculpting and photography and tennis and swimming. I simply do not have enough time. My life is not in control.

You know, I still love the innocent parts of the game. I love hitting tennis balls. I love seeing the young guys do well. I'll still have a lot of friends to watch. I'll miss the relationships probably the most. As time passes, I'll probably miss the tennis more.

Whoever has played tennis knows the court is pretty big and you always have space to put the ball in.

Women are everywhere. We're letting them play golf and tennis now. It's out of control.

As a tennis player, you have to get used to losing every week. Unless you win the tournament, you always go home as a loser. But you have to take the positive out of a defeat and go back to work. Improve to fail better.

Women's tennis is two sets of rubbish that lasts only half an hour.

Tennis has to become everything to you if you're going to make it to the top. You have to live it.

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.

Tennis has had a very positive impact on my life.

I hate to lose more than I love to win.

When you do something best in life, you don't really want to give that up - and for me it's tennis.

I have always believed that my job is to try and give my best on the tennis courts.

Good shot, bad luck and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis, though these, of course, can be slightly amplified.

If you're a champion, you have to have it in your heart.

I'm very, very focused on my children. In fact, I'm very religious about having breakfast with them every morning, having dinner with them every evening, and spend all the weekends with them that I don't work. So as long as I'm not traveling, I'm always with them and I go to their soccer and tennis matches.

I was sporty in high school. I played tennis and hockey, and was basketball captain. Then I went to university and stopped doing sport and started eating ice cream.

In tennis, it is not the opponent you fear, it is the failure itself, knowing how near you were but just out of reach.

That's the key to success, isn't it? It has to be fun.

My dad said if you become a tennis professional just make sure you get into the top hundred, because you have to make a little bit of money. You make a living so you can pay your coaching and, you know, your travels.

The next point - that's all you must think about.

I did a really good job of sticking to the tennis court.

I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I love to play.

Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.

As soon as I step on the court I just try to play tennis and don't find excuses. You know, I just lost because I lost, not because my arm was sore.

I think my family needs me more than anybody else, and tennis doesn't need me anymore. I respect my wife a lot for taking all that in. She said, 'I didn't marry a tennis player; you'd retired.' Now it's time to do something else.

On the tennis court, one needs a cool temperament, tremendous ball sense, reflexes, speed, hand-eye co-ordination, power, timing and peak physical fitness. Off the court, the player and support team need skills in planning, execution, travel, an ability to raise funds when needed, and several other talents.

Being champion is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown.

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.

All I cared about in tennis was winning.

For the first couple of years I played really bad tennis. It was so bad that they booed me off the court

There's a lot of ingredients go into being a good tennis player.

I think that tennis has been in a place for many years without any change. Davis Cup and Fed Cup has always been a very exciting platform for players because it is such an individual sport, and we get to play a team competition. We love being part of a team.

I don't do a huge amount of physical activity. I play tennis, I work out sporadically, and I eat well and take care of myself.

Me writing about tennis is like a baker baking bread.

I call tennis the McDonald's of sport - you go in, they make a quick buck out of you, and you're out.

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.

I'm going to have to pick my shots and play great tennis.

All my time in rehab has made me appreciate tennis more than ever.

I'm the sort of person who keeps a lot to myself.

If I was the type of person who had tennis, tennis, tennis all the time and I went to bed and ended up dreaming about tennis, I would go nuts.

There are a lot of good memories, and because I was injured, during the rehab, I met my wife. The tennis was very good but the injuries were good for something too

I felt tight from the beginning of the match to the end. I couldn't relax.

I can see that the tennis for the fans could be a bit boring, and these days you have these new modern things which you can do, and you have a lot of time, because you just play a match, and practise, and many times in between you can bring many things to the fans.

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 true I always try to be as seductive as possible but I wouldn't be here if I couldn't play tennis.

I am not Shakespeare or Hemingway, but I have written stories on tennis that were brilliant.

I don't know if Wimbledon's seen anything like it. I don't know if they will again. But it was just - it was electric. The Aussie crowd, I'm really proud of them, the way they conducted themselves. You know they're great losers, as well.

I've stayed calm when I'm winning and I've stayed calm when I've lost. Tennis is a sport where we have a lot of tournaments every week, so you can't celebrate a lot when you have big victories, and you cannot get too down when you're losing, as in a few days you'll be in the next tournament and you'll have to be ready with that.

I don't think tennis is a glamour game, not at all.

New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.

Sport doesn't know barriers, really. You are judged on your performance... how far you can jump, how fast you can run, how well you can hit a tennis ball.

In the '70s, Florida-style golf communities started to be built for America's baby-boomers who were doing well and taking up the game but couldn't get into exclusive golf and tennis clubs and were looking for a nice place to live and raise their families.

I never thought tennis was going to give me so much satisfaction.

Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.

To meet my goals, I couldn't let up when I was playing tennis.

I don't make a habit of watching tennis matches, but I try to watch all the major finals. I try to make time for that. So unless I have something going with the kids where I can't, I try to watch, and I enjoy that.

I have this terrible dark side to my personality, which playing tennis keeps at bay

Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.

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.

As tennis players, you are never satisfied. We are greedy as players, always want better results.

If I stay healthy and I'm playing good tennis I have as good a chance as anybody.

My personal style is really comfy: flats, tennis shoes, ponytails, no makeup,

Tennis players go into a press conference, and almost every one of them is the same. We do very little differently on a day-to-day basis.

I look at tennis as a bit of a platform to hopefully touch lives and encourage people.

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.

The thing about tennis is if you stay off for two weeks, or just for three days, you can lose your rhythm quickly. So it's just a question of constant diligence and vigilance.

My audiences have given me lots of love as a tennis player. I hope they appreciate my passion for acting.

Tennis is like, it gives you a lot of chances, but if you don't take those chances, it takes a lot of chances away from you. It's just the scoring pattern. We cannot dwell over a loss or a win for very long. We have no time to celebrate; we have no time to dwell; we have to move on. Wake up the next day and try and win the match.

I'm like an expensive menu... you can look but you can't afford!

It makes you also realize, 'OK, I'm excited to play tennis, and I work really hard to be the best tennis player I think I can be,' but I don't waste my time on stupid stuff, you know what I mean.

Working with Brando was fun. It was like a tennis match. We played unbelievably well together.

I began playing in the Pacific Coast Indoor Tennis Championships.

When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: Their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way.

With a tennis racket strapped tightly to her hiking pack, Martina Navratilova began her ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro. The tennis legend had visions of celebrating at the summit of Africa's highest peak by hitting a couple balls to see how far they might fly in the thin air at 19,341 feet.

It's that I have a good personality and am a good tennis player.

There are not many Irish people playing tennis!

If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that's concentration.

I was a very good tennis player in Ottawa, Canada - nationally ranked when I was, like, 13. Then I moved to Los Angeles when I was 15, and everyone in L.A. just killed me. I was pretty great in Canada. Not so much in Los Angeles.

Core strength and stability is very important to me. Tennis is all about rotation of the body and my ability to create power. I incorporate a lot of abdominal, back and glute exercises into my gym sessions.

I was in the tennis bubble. I wasn't thinking about the big picture. I didn't notice what they said on television, I wasn't reading any papers. I had a coach and a manager, and they kept me in the bubble.

I would like to thank all my tennis fans who were there from Day One when I was No. 1, through my stabbing, and my comeback.

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.

Tennis is a funny game, and it takes a life-time of keeping one's eyes open on the circuit to have any chance of understanding the strange phenomena that exist in our exciting sport!

My mom, she's from Ireland, coached tennis in Nigeria when she was a missionary and turned me on to it when I was young.

Now I do bowling, golf, and tennis. I want to be a good bowler.

I think in the lifetime of a tennis player there are many times where you feel that tremendous confidence.

My first job was in sixth grade, sweeping the clay tennis courts at the yacht club near my house, which I was not a member of. Always had to pay my own rent. But I don't really have any concept of how money works. I don't know how much things cost. Like a BMW. Or a quart of milk. It's embarrassing.

At the very beginning of my career, when I opened my business in Italy, I was also a ranked tennis player. I had won many tournaments. To be an athlete was my first choice. Second choice: designer. However! There was more money in being a designer at that time.

I have a passion for playing tennis and enjoy the workload and struggles of performing in this amazing global sport.

When you are very little tennis should be fun, it should be a game.

Sports have always been a really important part of how I energize myself, as well as how I relax. I spend a lot of my spare time with my family playing tennis, biking and rollerblading.

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 had a great tennis career. I have no regrets. But to find peace with yourself, and to finally be with your family - I'm probably the happiest guy in the world.

I love tennis. I've played it my whole life. Loved it since the age of three. I had an injury, so from the age of 13 to 24 I didn't play much. Then when I moved out to L.A., there were so many tennis courts that I rekindled the love.

Sometimes you're looking to play perfect tennis but it's not going to happen all the time and you have to accept it.

I let my racket do the talking. That's what I am all about, really. I just go out and win tennis matches.

In tennis it's easy to get greedy - and one Grand Slam doesn't feel enough any more.

Anybody who can dial a telephone can master tennis scoring in about 15 minutes.

I did realise more than ever, after the stabbing, that tennis is a business - a tough business.