As a tennis player you can win and you can lose, and you have to be ready for both. I practised self-control as a kid. But as you get older they both – winning and losing – get easier.
Two weeks ago, I was in a fantastic situation, winning at Roland Garros. Now, losing in the first round, it’s tough. The tour continues. Life continues. This is a sport of victories, not a sport of losses. Nobody remembers the losses. I don’t want to remember the loss.
The thing, when you’re down two sets to love, is to stay calm, even though it’s hard, because people are freaking out, people are worried for you.
Confidence is the most important thing in this sport, and the confidence from winning Wimbledon would make it easier to win the Olympics, too. Either would be very difficult, both even more-but the player who wins Wimbledon will be the favorite for the Olympics. It can happen.
I’m really, really emotional.
That’s painful always to lose.
Is only a tennis match. At the end, that’s life. There is much more important things.
I am decidedly unfriendly during a golf game, from the first hole to the last.
I’m delighted with the way I’m playing at the moment.
I’m not the best player in the history of tennis. I think I’m amongst the best. That’s true. That’s enough for me.
I will do as I usually do. Tomorrow is going to be a day like any other day.
I was passionate about soccer. I still am. Odd, though – playing soccer always made me much more anxious than playing tennis. On soccer days, I’d be out of bed by 6 in the morning, all nervous. But I was always calm when it was time for a tennis match. I still don’t know why.
I just try to win the match by fighting for every point, and running down every ball.
People sometimes exaggerate this business of humility. It’s a question simply of knowing who you are, where you are, and that the world will continue exactly as it is without you.
The problem nowadays is that children have become too much the center of attention. Their parents, their families, everybody around them feels a need to put them on a pedestal. So much effort is invested in boosting their self-esteem that they are made to feel special in and of themselves, without having done anything.
When Federer has these patches of utter brilliance, the only thing you can do is try and stay calm, wait for the storm to pass. There is not much you can do when the best player in history is seeing the ball as big as a football and hitting it with power, confidence, and laser accuracy.
He has always been obedient, which is a sign of intelligence in a child because it shows you understand that your elders know better than you, that you respect their superior experience of the world.
And of one thing I have no doubt: the more you train, the better your feeling. Tennis is, more than most sports, a sport of the mind; it is the player who has those good sensations on the most days, who manages to isolate himself best from his fears and from the ups and downs in morale a match inevitably brings, who ends up being world number one.
So there was fun and magic in my relationship with Toni, even if the prevailing mood when we trained was stony and severe.
Clark Kent and Superman.
I learned that you always have to hang in there, that however remote your chances of winning might seem, you have to push yourself to the very limit of your abilities and try your luck. That day in Melbourne I saw, more clearly than ever before, that the key to this game resides in the mind, and if the mind is clear and strong, you can overcome almost any obstacle, including pain. Mind can triumph over matter.