It is very dangerous to have your self-worth riding on your results as an athlete.
There's no evidence that says that the money a federation has translates into success. I hope that that will change.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that most champions are born into certain environments and encouraged early. Then, later on, they might get some assistance from their federations.
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.
Tennis is still very successful in spite of itself.
I think all of us are shaped by the choices we make.
There used to be a lot more politics in the Olympics, when the Soviet Bloc committed a lot of resources for propaganda purposes.
Sports for me is when a guy walks off the court, and you really can't tell whether he won or lost, when he carries himself with pride either way.
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.
You need to make sure everyone is healthy first and foremost.
America has an interesting global role, don't we? It certainly seems to be changing. Our government right now has a softer hand than we've had in the past, but I still think that we're the global behemoth.
It does take a great hunger to be successful at anything.
Flying has opened up new horizons for tennis.
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.
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.
It's unfair to expect the USTA, just because they make this pot of money, to just snap their fingers and make champions. It's not simple, and anyone who thinks it is hasn't really looked underneath the hood to see how the engine works.
The reason I didn't take the baseball route is because they don't have rankings for baseball players.
Without a doubt, there's huge satisfaction when a relatively smaller nation can take on a bigger nation and defeat them. There's a lot of pride in that.
Trophies separate the winners from losers, and life is about winning and losing. Go into business and you see. You're competing every day.
There are only four U.S. tournaments that the very best players in the world play every year - Palm Springs, Miami, Cincinnati, and the U.S. Open. So how would golf or NFL or NHL fare if there were only four times a year that their very best were visible? Tennis went international, and for us to expect it to be popular media-wise is very naïve. And that translates into children and families being interested.
It's really easy to find your friends when you're playing away. You have a close-knit group with you and everyone else is cheering hard for their side. There's more satisfaction coming away with a road victory.
America is the world's policemen, whether you and I like that or not. That's a fact. People globally feel that.
You can kick a ball into the net, throw a basketball into the net. Tennis is complicated. It'll make a lot of great athletes run the other way because they can't be successful initially.
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.
Even the poor can be fat in the U.S. That says something about a country. That's how incredible what we have is. But it can also take away incentive.
It's hard for anyone in the 24-hour news cycles that we all live in now to follow something that the first round is played in March and the final finishes in December. I understand the challenges there.
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.
There are certainly great cities in America that don't have ATP and WTA events. Our fans are very provincial. They want American champions.
If you don't want to practice, unless you have a hard-nosed coach, you don't have to.
If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.
We lose a lot of young athletes because tennis is such a difficult sport. It's not like kicking a soccer ball.
Tennis is more than just shots. It's about being clutch and beating the people on the other side of the net.
I've been lucky enough to primarily work for myself over the years.
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.
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.
When you lack cohesion, it becomes difficult to have a clear marketing strategy.
The airplane has had a big impact on my life.
The good news is I have time.
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.
It's a simple question of supply and demand. But all of us are grossly overpaid. I think it's a ridiculous dispute.
I will do everything in my power to make sure people are aware that our team is out there fighting the good fight for the tennis fans of the United States.
What I've seen historically is winning is a major aloe. It solves a lot of problems.
I think all of us who kind of live within the sport recognize that Davis Cup certainly could be a little more visible if perhaps there were some adjustments made to it, and it was made a little bit more easy to understand for the fans, if there's a little bit more of a start and finish line.
What I like about the USTA is that it's developing systems to help the coaches coach better.
I am there to play tennis and represent the U.S., but I'm also aware that not everyone's going to be able to think that way.
Unbelievable, yet, what else could it be?
Tennis doesn't encourage any kind of intellectual development.
I knew I was the second-best tennis player in the state of Florida and No. 8 in the United States of America when I was 12 years old and I couldn't tell you what I was in baseball, but I liked my chances in tennis of getting a scholarship to college.
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.
I think there's no reason the Davis Cup couldn't be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.
People handle stress in different ways.
What separates the winners from the losers is that they can deal with doing their best while still coming up short.
I really try not to read the tennis articles, because a lot of times they're guessing at how a player is feeling, and I like to keep myself kind of open minded about how I'm feeling, rather than have someone else explain to me what's going on.
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.
You'd have to think that if he'd been around today, Rod Laver would have been Rod Laver.
You have to look at each tie and look at what your options are.
You have to be extreme to be exceptional. I couldn't revel in being number one. I had to get to zero. When my fitness was at its peak, I was intimidating. I made guys cave in. They'd be dejected in the locker room after matches, and I'd go out for a run, as if it wasn't enough. I'd rub it in their faces. I meant to do that.
The dumber you are on court, the better you're going to play.
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.
I think the Davis Cup has some untapped potential. It should be as prominent as the Grand Slams when it takes place. If you put it together with Fed Cup for an organized, nationalistic team competition taking place in a central location for two weeks, I think that would be beneficial from a fan interest stand point, from a media stand point and from a television stand point.
Even the poor can be fat in the U.S.
One of Nadal’s strengths is that he’s so humble, that he’s surprised at what he has achieved, and that he has never bought into his greatness.
There are things we can't control - like the wins and the losses.
If I had to choose one man to play for my life, it would be Nadal.
Hell be lucky to last five or six years on those knees. What it might have to come down to is playing less on hard surfaces and playing more on forgiving surfaces.
I'm a big proponent of Hawk-Eye. I think it's a wonderful addition, not only for the players, but more importantly for the fans.
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.
We have a lot of options. America is a great country.
Getting to number one in the world without a coach is highly unlikely.
