The fifth set is not about tennis, it’s about nerves.
Thats the hard part about sport: as men we havent started to be in our prime, but as athletes we are old people. I needed support. I lost trust and did stupid things.
How do you build a relationship when you’ve hardly shared a word but suddenly share a child? How do you love a daughter you don’t see for nearly two years? When does she become your daughter? How does she become your daughter?
If I go into a club now, all the blonde girls leave my corner and all the black girls come into my corner. It’s as if I’m racist towards white girls!
I don’t know how many millions of photographs have been taken of me.
[Roger Federer] We have a guy from Switzerland who is just playing the game in a way I haven’t seen anyone – and I mean anyone – play before. How fortunate we are to be able to see that. If he stays healthy and motivated – and the wonderful feel he has stays with him – he is the kind of guy who can overtake the greatest.
I believe that everything in life happens for a reason.
Before, I wouldn’t have sacrificed anything for tennis but when I met Barbara it was different. I would have sacrificed tennis for Barbara.
When I was a child, I had posters of James Dean in my room. I was a big admirer of his work and was fascinated by him living on the edge. Looking back, my life was kind of the same.
The only thing I had on my mind was tennis, and sometimes girls,… My life was all about tennis. My office was the whole world. The word home didn’t really exist.
I met with my lawyers. They gave me all the wrong advice. For a long time I refused to accept the child was mine. I should have met her, arranged a DNA test and accepted my responsibility.
I want to be a hero, a small and good kind of hero, even though I know heroes have very short lives.
I’m a different man now. I’m still a romantic, I still believe in love, but when I met Barbara I was looking for it. Now, I don’t know.
The eyes of some of the fans at Davis Cup matches scare me. There’s no light in them. Fixed emotions. Blind worship. Horror. It makes me think of what happened to us long ago.
Does anyone ask their parents how they are conceived?
I had the pleasure of competing at the Olympic Games and at Wimbledon and was fortunate enough to win the gold medal in both events,
I lost in the second round of the French Open and had 10 days off. I went to the Hard Rock Cafe. It was exciting to be away from my parents, to stay in a hotel. Hotels at 17 meant freedom.
For a year, I had all sorts of weirdos coming on to me.
A few years after my first son was born, he wanted to know how we chose his name, so I began reading him the story of Noah’s Ark.
I didn’t start a war. Nobody died.
Girls had never been important. I’d had a girlfriend or two and had liked them a lot but it wasn’t love, because my first love was tennis.
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