Jimmy Connors Quotes About Tennis
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But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?
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Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.
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I hate to lose more than I love to win.
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I'm getting tired of saying hello to Stan Smith and not getting any reply. I'm cocky and confident and maybe I'm too bullheaded sometimes, but I think I have some fan and player support. I know what the others say, but I'm not that obnoxious. I am not a punk. I'm 5' 10", 155 pounds. I've got broad shoulders and I can pack a punch. Most of these guys are windbags anyway. If they ever try anything with me, I'll be to the net fast.
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New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.
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I never lost a tennis match, I just ran out of time
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I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within.
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It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.
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Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'
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There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once.
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I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.
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I don't go out there to love my enemy. I go out there to squash him.
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With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern.
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Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.
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Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.
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The minute you think you know everything about tennis is the minute your game starts going down the tubes.
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Tennis would be much more exciting if they had pitching machines firing Tennis was given to me to keep me off the street corners of east St. Louis.
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Equality? They ought to play the women's final on opening day. Everybody knows who's going to be in it.
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No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.
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Greatest thing in life: Winning a tennis match. Second greatest thing in life: Losing a tennis match
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Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.
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People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there. Maybe my methods aren't socially acceptable to some, but it's what I have to do to survive. I don't go out there to love my enemy. I go out there to squash him.
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People say I'm around because I have a lot of heart, but I know all the heart in the world couldn't have helped me if I wasn't physically fit.
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