Famous Tennis Players Quotes

"I remember as a kid, I was improvising and making little trophies out of different materials and going in front of the mirror, lifting the trophies and saying 'Nole was the champion!'"
Novak Djokovic

You live during the match, and you have strong emotions, but you don't want to get too overexcited. My body's totally flat now. I cannot move anymore. I'm totally exhausted, just because of the tension out there.
Roger Federer

Losing is not my enemy..fear of losing is my enemy.
Rafael Nadal

"You've just got to get over that mental hurdle and those battles in your own head during matches when things aren't going so well. It takes time. It's probably all things I already knew, but for someone to talk about it maybe in a different way makes you realise things."
Sam Stosur

I'm not afraid of anyone, but sometimes I'm afraid of myself. The mental part is very important.
Justine Henin

This time last year I would have said Federer would beat Sampras’s record. Now I’m not so sure. His aura has gone. He’s not as dominant as he was, and since I beat him in Australia he’s looked frustrated. Players are beginning to challenge him now, especially myself and Rafa. He’s got 12 Grand Slams to his name and maybe he will beat Sampras, but now I’m here it will be tough for him.
Novak Djokovic

Almost everybody's here doing the same thing. Who am I to come up with an excuse when there's 64 other players here doing the same thing? 63 others, sorry.
Andy Roddick

I'm a perfectionist. I'm pretty much insatiable. I feel there's so many things I can improve on.
Serena Williams

You have to find it. No one else can find it for you.
Bjorn Borg

That's when you've got to grit your teeth and hang in there and try and find a way to win when you're not playing your best tennis - that's what I can be proud of
Lleyton Hewitt

Both Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King used these phrases ("playing out of one's mind," or "over one's head") to describe their performances while winning the finals at Wimbledon in 1975. . . . The player loses himself in the action, continually breaking the false limits placed on is potential. Awareness becomes acutely heightened, while analysis, anxiety and self-conscious thought are completely forgotten. Enjoyment is at a peak - pure and unspoiled.
W. Timothy Gallwey

As you know, I was one of the original grunters. But Jimmy Connors used to grunt way before I was born. I never knew I was grunting, it was just part of my strokes.
Monica Seles

I'm not lucky. If I play another player, even if I don't play really good, I think I can win.
Richard Gasquet

It is very important not to think about losing.
Venus Williams

Everything is possible in this life...
Marat Safin

It's like love. When you look too hard, you don't find it. When you let it happen naturally, it comes.
Marat Safin

You don't think about anything because you just try to playevery game, every point. If you get some chance, you try to take this chance.
Nikolay Davydenko

You've got to take the initiative and play your game. In a decisive set, confidence is the difference.
Chris Evert

I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within.
Jimmy Connors

I never look back, I look forward.
Steffi Graf

"Control the things you can control ."
Sam Stosur

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

A smile is a curve that can straighten out a lot of problems.
Ana Ivanovic

He'll go down as one of the guys who changed our sport in a lot of ways, not only the way he played the game, but also the way that he conducted himself on and off the court.
Lleyton Hewitt

I don't care now if I ever win a match in my life again. Whatever I do in my life, wherever I go, I'm going to be always Wimbledon champion.
Goran Ivanisevic

There were many occasions in my career where I could have given up, where I asked myself whether I would ever make it.
Amelie Mauresmo

The difference of great players is at a certain point in a match they raise their level of play and maintain it. Lesser players play great for a set, but then less.
Pete Sampras

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

When you start from nothing, when you come from nothing, it makes you hungry. I am proud of where I came from and I know what I want. I want to win.
Maria Sharapova

The great part about tennis is you can't run out the clock.... As long as we were still playing, I had a chance.
Andre Agassi

"Winning for your country gives you a high that lasts two or three days. You can't go to K-Mart and pick that up.
Jim Courier

Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.
Billie Jean King

The roughest thing I ever said to an umpire was, 'Are you sure?'
Rod Laver

He's a haircut and a forehand.
Ivan Lendl

I think when you start to do well and get your confidence back, everything becomes more fun. When you're playing with not your full capacity of confidence, I think things get a little tough. I knew I could be doing better than what I was doing. Even though I was ranked 5 or 4 or whatever it was, I wanted to get back to the level I thought I could play at.
Lindsay Davenport

I'll let the racket do the talking.
John McEnroe

The ball is round, the game is long.
Bjorn Borg

You don't have to hate your opponents to beat them.
Kim Clijsters

I felt better being in the background. That's the way I like it.
Stefan Edberg

I just try to concentrate on concentrating.
Martina Navratilova

"I have always considered tennis as a combat in an arena between two gladiators who have their racquets and their courage as their weapons."
Yannick Noah

I made it look so easy on court all those years. No one realized how hard I had to work. No one realized how much I had to put into it. They underestimated my intensity.
Pete Sampras

So there was a fire inside me. And that fire inside you, it can be turned into a negative form or a positive form. And I gradually realised that I had this fire and that it had to be used in a positive way.
John Newcombe

What rivalry? I win all the matches.
Martina Hingis

I'm never going to win a match against him playing really conservative.
James Blake

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

Tennis has given me soul.
Martina Navratilova

Sometimes I wish I could have been a bit more relaxed, but then I wouldn't have been the same player.
Steffi Graf

Every time I hit the ball on the wall I uses to pretend I was there (Wimbledon). When I went to sleep I used to pretend I was there.
Evonne Goolagong