Motivational Tennis Quotes

I play each point like my life depends on it.

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

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

Tennis has given me soul.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Everything is possible in this life.

The ball is round, the game is long.

I never knew I was grunting, it was just part of my strokes.

I never look back, I look forward.

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.

It is very important not to think about losing.

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

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.

He's a haircut and a forehand.

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.

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

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.

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

What rivalry? I win all the matches.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I just try to concentrate on concentrating.

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

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

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.

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!'

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

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

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.

The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.

I'll let the racket do the talking.

Champions keep playing until they get it right.

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

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.

To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when no one else will.

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

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.

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 tghe finals at Wimbledon in 1975. . . . The player loses himself in the action, continually breaki g the false limits placed on is potential. Awareness becomes acutely heightened, while analysis, anxiety and self-conscious thought are compoletly forgotten. Enjoyment is at a peak - pure and unspoiled.

When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.

Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment.

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, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.