stamp the sport

 A new kind of athlete:

rivalry

 

"Everybody loves success, but they hate successful people."
- John McEnroe [born 1959]

Ace

“I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.”

- Serena Williams [born 1981]

top spin

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

– Martina Navratilova [born 1956]

advantage

“When you lose a couple of times, it makes you realize how difficult it is to win.”
– Steffi Graf

stay classy

match point

"The problem with athletics is you spend a third of your life not preparing for the other two-thirds."
- Andre Agassi

iconoclast

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”

- David Foster Wallace

routine

"I cannot work more than four hours per day. More than that is more enervating than five sets of tennis."
- Neil Simon

"Don't be afraid to do what you do as the people that mind don't matter and the people that matter don't mind."
- a perspective held by Jimmy Connors

routine

"I bounce the ball eight times before I serve."
- Milos Raonic

Tennis great Andre Agassi, a 9th grade dropout, created one of America's best preparatory schools: http://www.agassiprep.org

cortisone

"Soon the pain felt wonderful, almost sweet, because it was the kind that you can tell precedes relief. But maybe all pain is like that."
- Andre Agassi in Open, p. 5

World #1

"Going from failure to failure is sometimes a key part of success."
- Venus Williams

best tennis point ever?

An earlier reference to Federer here.

mental

"I've talked to a few tennis champions over the years - McEnroe, Borg, Agassi, Federer - and though immensely different in character, they were united by one thing: an overwhelming fear of the pain of defeat. It was always that, more than any desire for glory, that drove them on when they were young."
- Monica Seles [born 1973]