Tennis Prose




May/14

15

Interesting Tennis Player Quotes

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Martina Navratilova: “If I weren’t a tennis player, I’d be a golfer or skier or even a baseball player.”

Martina Navratilova: “I love competing … and winning. Winning is infectious. When you’re winning you push yourself until you start winning again. It’s a disease, I guess. There are few things I do – even to playing card games – where I don’t feel the need to come out on top. The thrill of winning…is…just fantastic.” (I’ve heard of players saying winning is an ‘addiction’ but never a ‘disease’ before.)

Marty Riessen: “Connors experienced something that happens to all top players. Someone beats you and then everyone thinks they can. It used to be that people used to lose to him 62 62 and think it was a triumph. But Ashe changed that. He showed there was an effective strategy that could be used against him and that gave everyone else more confidence.” (This quote may apply to the struggles of Nadal right now, after he suffered the crushing loss to Wawrinka and Djokovic in Miami earlier this year.)

Bob Lutz: “Connors is more obsessed with being number one than any other player. Everyone else thinks about winning tournaments, but that is not enough for Connors.”

Bjorn Borg at ’80 Wimbledon: “I want to be remembered as the greatest ever.” (I never knew Borg had such an outward verbal confidence.)

Gussie Moran: “I remember Pancho (Gonzalez) at the first tournament he ever played away from home. He was a quiet, shy boy who sat alone in the clubhouse. He had a forlorn look on his face and a chip on his shoulder. When he stepped onto the tennis court, he was someone else. He was a God, patrolling his personal heaven.”

Lew Hoad: “I guess that Gorg (Pancho) feels he can’t be friendly with a fellow he has to try to beat every night. Maybe that’s right. He does rather well, you know.”

Pancho Gonzalez: “This is the toughest sport of all. Even in pro basketball they don’t play every night. Besides, when they’re tired, they get a substitute. We don’t. We play even when we’re hurt. I’ve played with a sprained ankle. Lew (Hoad) finished a match one night after colliding with a wall and being knocked unconscious.” (Good points by Pancho here. I know a boxer who became world champion less than three years after turning pro after release from jail, with no official amateur experience – this can never happen in tennis.)

Althea Gibson: “Daddy thought there might be good money in (me becoming a boxer). He wanted to put me in it. As a matter of fact I was pretty fair fighter. Daddy taught me all the moves and I had a good punch, no kidding. I remember one day he got mad at me for not coming home for a couple of days and when I finally sashayed in, he didn’t waste any time going for any strap. He just walked up to me and punched me right in the face and knocked me for a loop. I got right up and punched him back as hard as I could and pretty soon we had a good little fight going, and we weren’t fooling around either.”

Althea Gibson: “I wasn’t exactly ready to start studying how to be a fine lady. I kept wanting to fight my opponent every time I started to lose a match.”

Quotes from Bud Collins Total Tennis: The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia

1 comment

  • gans · May 15, 2014 at 11:28 pm

    Desire to compete hard without the fear of losing, I think is the essence of sport. That’s love.
    Cheers!

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