John McEnroe Quotes Page 2

“Nick Kyrgios, if you don't want to be a professional tennis player, do something else.”

“No one cares about the Davis Cup. How many people know I won five Davis Cups and seven majors, but that I rarely played the Australian Open?”

“Of course for your main rivals, you're going to get extra motivated for it, particularly if you haven't played him for a long time.”

“Rafael Nadal is one of the great champions – a class act.”

“The good part of having six kids is, there's always one who wants to hug you and say, 'Daddy, I love you'.”

“The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you're in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don't even know you can come up and just dump on you.”

“The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what's best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you're banging your head against a brick wall all the time.”

“The older I get, the better I used to be.”

“The only thing 'championship' about Wimbledon is its prestige.”

“The perception is I didn't get along with umpires, obviously, and I didn't, on the court. But off the court, we had a good vibe.”

“There's something deeply satisfying when it succeeds, but I'm not going to do another book just to put my name on something and make some money if it's not something I deeply care about.”

“They would go back and listen to my matches, and two days later, I'd be fined. Because no one heard it while it was being played, but they heard it on some mic behind the court. Is that the way it should be? I don't think so.”

“Things slow down, the ball seems a lot bigger and you feel like you have more time. Everything computes – you have options, but you always take the right one.”

“This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.”

“We should reach out to people to try to go after the fans the way other sports do. Because we can't just depend on the fact that it is a great game.”

“What is the single most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well.”

“What made my matches against Borg and Connors interesting was, comparing it to boxing, it was like a puncher and a counter-puncher.”

“When I felt I was rejected by my first wife, and she said, 'Some day you will thank me for this', you know what? I do. And so, sometimes it is darkest before the dawn. You can think it is bleak and you can't see. You never know.”

“When I walk out there on court, I become a maniac... Something comes over me, man.”

“When I was 15 and playing in Kalamazoo, I ran into a light pole on the side of the court and was knocked out for a little while – when I woke up, I was seeing stars!”

“When I was 25, if you'd have said I was going to be a commentator, that would seem like, 'Oh, my God. That's a huge step down'.”

“When I was eight and a half, my parents moved to a part of Queens where there was a club nearby. We joined, and if you believe in someone up above, I think I was meant to play tennis.”

“Why don't they go back to wood racquets? Then we would see the best tennis to be played.”

“Women have it better in tennis than any other sport, but you shouldn't push them to play more than they're capable of playing.”

“You look at a guy like Michael Jordan: I can't believe there will be other basketball players like him.”