When I turned professional, what I was really aiming for was to be in the top 100, try to hold the top 100 for ten years, and just be in the show, and have a nice career. It's more than I could have ever hoped for. I worked awfully hard for it, but there are other people who worked just as hard and didn't get the breaks. I recognized that I've been lucky and being able to live this life that I wanted since a young age. I really went after it with everything that I have and somehow it worked out.
There is a lot of pressure on tennis players like other sports that are singular like you're not on a team. When all the pressure rides on your shoulders, it can be a lot different. Team sports you share those moments with the teammates. You share the pressures. You share the wins. You share the losses. You have a coach that can change the course of matches. But in tennis you're out there by yourself. There are no caddies. There are no coaches. You do it alone in the arena and I think that ups the ante a little bit.
People handle stress in different ways.
In America, we love to give people second chances too - as long as you admit you were wrong and come back and do it the right way.
What I've seen historically is winning is a major aloe. It solves a lot of problems.
Getting to number one in the world without a coach is highly unlikely.
Tennis is still very successful in spite of itself.
When your four biggest tournaments all operate relatively independently, and the ATP and WTA tour operate independently, and you have Davis Cup and Fed Cup that operate independently, it makes it a tough message.
When you lack cohesion, it becomes difficult to have a clear marketing strategy.
You need to look to make a cohesive calendar that makes sense and helps elongate the careers of your players as opposed to shorten them inadvertently.
You can look directly at the NFL and see how successful they've become because they have central control, central voice, and it doesn't mean that the owners don't have a say, but the commissioner runs it, and he's the one who speaks for them when they go out and do commercial deals.
The first thing I would do is create one office that controlled all of pro tennis so you had one central voice that spoke for tennis. Central governance is something that's really held the sport back and will continue to do so.
Us going out there and performing our best. That's how I define success. I'm not going to define it for us by the wins and the losses as much as by the effort and how we handle ourselves.
There are things we can't control - like the wins and the losses.
There's a reason why Federer and Nadal are so gracious when they lose. They sleep well at night knowing that they've given their best.
What separates the winners from the losers is that they can deal with doing their best while still coming up short.
Fear is an interesting energy that we all have to face. Some people step up and aren't afraid but still come up short. And some would rather cop out: "My shoulder hurts" or "I didn't give it my all." They can sleep at night.
Trophies separate the winners from losers, and life is about winning and losing. Go into business and you see. You're competing every day.
Many books have been written about what the X-factor is, what separates people who win big matches versus those who struggle. Some of it's innate, but there's a piece of it that's learned, embracing those moments.
If you don't want to practice, unless you have a hard-nosed coach, you don't have to.
You can drill down on where hunger comes from and figure it out from there, but there absolutely has to be a sense of urgency if you're going to play tennis because you're the team - there's no one for you to rely on but yourself.
Focusing on one thing can be tough, and people with fewer options are more apt to concentrate on what they're doing. There's probably something to hunger.
I'm not suggesting that the entire nation can't be successful, but there's something to it when you have 150 cable channels and the Internet at your fingertips and video games and all kinds of ADD-addled devices like my iPhone and your BlackBerry and things that keep us busy.
It does take a great hunger to be successful at anything.
Even the poor can be fat in the U.S.
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