Quotes by Tennis Players

I realized that with hard work the world was your oyster. You could do anything you wanted to do. I learned that at a young age.
Chris Evert
A couple of times a day I sit quietly and visualize my body fighting the AIDS virus. It's the same as me sitting and seeing myself hit the perfect serve. I did that often when I was an athlete.
Arthur Ashe
The moment of enlightenment is when a person's dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities.
Vic Braden
You have to block everything out and be extremely focused and be relaxed and mellow too.
Jennifer Capriati
Whoever said "It's not whether you win or lose that counts " probably lost.
Martina Navratilova
Losers have tons of variety. Champions take pride in just learning to hit the same old boring winners.
Vic Braden
Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net you can be sure I want the ball.
Billie Jean King
I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards becoming a champion.
Billie Jean King
You've got to take the initiative and play your game ... confidence makes the difference.
Chris Evert
Experience tells you what to do confidence allows you to do it.
Stan Smith
I always felt that I hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve. I always felt I could get better. That's the whole incentive.
Virginia Wade
No matter what accomplishments you make somebody helped you.
Althea Gibson
I think the key is for women not to set any limits.
Martina Navratilova
If I made it it's half because I was game enough to take a lot of punishment along the way and half because there were a lot of people who cared enough to help me.
Althea Gibson
Losers have tons of variety. Champions take pride in just learning to hit the same old boring winners.
Vic Braden
The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose.
John McEnroe
If I win several tournaments in a row I get so confident I'm in a cloud. A loss gets me eager again.
Chris Evert Lloyd
If you're a champion you have to have it in your heart.
Chris Evert
I like to laugh but on the court it is my work. I try to smile but it is so difficult. I concentrate on the ball not on my face.
Steffi Graf
A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
Billie Jean King
I was nervous and confident at the same time nervous about going out there in front of all of those people with so much at stake and confident that I was going to go out there and win.
Althea Gibson
If you can react the same way to winning and losing that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life.
Chris Evert
Who ever said, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,’ probably lost.
Martina Navratilova
I hate to lose more than I love to win.
Jimmy Connors
Qué lindo es sonar despierto, he says. How lovely it is to dream while you are awake. Dream while you are awake, Andre. Anybody can dream while they're asleep, but you need to dream all the time, and say your dreams out loud, and believe in them.In other words, when in the final of a slam, I must dream. I must play to win.
Andre Agassi
I slide to my knees and say, "Please let this be over." Then, I'm not ready for it to be over.
Andre Agassi
Maybe I don't know yet how to be happy and play well at the same time.
Andre Agassi
I have no sense of humor about losing
Rafael Nadal
I find it surreal, then perfectly normal. I'm struck by how fast the surreal becomes the norm. I marvel at how unexciting it is to be famous, how mundane famous people are. They're confused, uncertain, insecure, and often hate what they do. It's something we always hear - like that old adage that money can't buy happiness-but we never believe it until we see it ourselves. Seeing it in 1992 brings me a new measure of confidence.
Andre Agassi
I've been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I've won a slam, I know something that 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 as long as the bad. Not even close.
Andre Agassi
A ball feels different off every player's racket-there are minute but concrete subtleties of force and spin. Now, hitting with her (Steffi Graf), I feel her subtleties. It's like touching her, though we're forty feet apart. Every forehand is foreplay.
Andre Agassi
Enduring means accepting. Accepting things as they are and not as you would wish them to be, and then looking ahead, not behind.
Rafael Nadal
Walking to the net, I'm certain that I've lost to the better man, the Everest of the next generation. I pity the young players who will have to contend with him. I feel for the man who is fated to play Agassi to his Sampras. Though I don't mention Pete by name, I have him uppermost in my mind when I tell reporters: It's real simple. Most people have weaknesses. Federer has none.
Andre Agassi
We made a successful, last-minute effort to get the French Open many years ago, when the USA network bailed on it. I remember, four of us jumped on a plane on the spur of the moment to cover it. I think we had someone draw up a sign (by hand) that we could hold up in front of the camera to tell viewers that it was ESPN coverage.
Patrick McEnroe
Remember this: You are the benchmark of your success - you define it. Don't let anyone else define it because if you do, you will fail. Appreciate those who support you and challenge those who don't
Martina Navratilova
I address the trophy and the warped reflection: All the pain and suffering you've caused me.
Andre Agassi
The most animated talks we have are about…things
Andre Agassi
My ambition is to enjoy my life and to do exactly what I want to do. And I'll do that. I will be free.
Venus Williams
You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.
Arthur Ashe
Control what you can control.
Andre Agassi
Given all that lies beyond mycontrol, I obsess about the few things I can control
Andre Agassi
Older people make this mistake all the time with younger people, treating them as a finished product when in fact they are in process.
Andre Agassi
Champions keep playing until they get it right.
Billie Jean King
Frankie's chief virtue in my book is the way he talks about his kids.
Andre Agassi
Doubt makes faith true
Bill Johnston
Whoever said, "It's not whether you win or lose that counts," probably lost.
Martina Navratilova
If you have confidence you have patience. Confidence, that is everything.
Ilie Nastase
I don't focus on what I'm up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest.
Venus Williams
Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players - and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer's opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis you stand face-to-face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They're inches away. In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement....
Andre Agassi
I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such — all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world — you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.
Patrick McEnroe
However great your dedication, you never win anything on your own
Rafael Nadal
Whoever said 'It’s not whether you win or lose that counts' probably lost.
Martina Navratilova
I stand and feel an overpowering urge to forgive, because I realize that my father can't help himself, that he never could help himself, any more than he could understand himself.
Andre Agassi
There are many ways of getting strong, sometimes talking is the best way.
Andre Agassi
Tennis is the loneliest sport
Andre Agassi
The problem nowadays is that children have become too much the center of attention. Their parents, their families, everybody around them feels a need to put them on a pedestal. So much effort is invested in boosting their self-esteem that they are made to feel special in and of themselves, without having done anything.
Rafael Nadal
The day you give priority to bogus ethics over human reactions, you become a loser. Human reactions are priceless. Rules should never, ever stifle emotions. Tennis is a very human game facing a great danger that it will be strangulated in a cat's cradle of unnecessary or inhumane rules.
Ted Tinling
... a writer concocts a different story for every reader.
Mike Bryan
Tennis taught me so many lessons in life. One of the things it taught me is that every ball that comes to me, I have to make a decision. I have to accept responsibility for the consequences every time I hit a ball.
Billie Jean King
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.
Andre Agassi