Jim Courier Quotes

Us going out there and performing our best. That's how I define success. I'm not going to define it for us by the wins and the losses as much as by the effort and how we handle ourselves.

There are things we can't control - like the wins and the losses.

If I had to choose one man to play for my life, it would be Nadal.

People handle stress in different ways.

If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.

The good news is I have time.

When you lack cohesion, it becomes difficult to have a clear marketing strategy.

Even the poor can be fat in the U.S. That says something about a country. That's how incredible what we have is. But it can also take away incentive.

When I turned professional, what I was really aiming for was to be in the top 100, try to hold the top 100 for ten years, and just be in the show, and have a nice career. It's more than I could have ever hoped for. I worked awfully hard for it, but there are other people who worked just as hard and didn't get the breaks. I recognized that I've been lucky and being able to live this life that I wanted since a young age. I really went after it with everything that I have and somehow it worked out.

There are only four U.S. tournaments that the very best players in the world play every year - Palm Springs, Miami, Cincinnati, and the U.S. Open. So how would golf or NFL or NHL fare if there were only four times a year that their very best were visible? Tennis went international, and for us to expect it to be popular media-wise is very naïve. And that translates into children and families being interested.

America has an interesting global role, don't we? It certainly seems to be changing. Our government right now has a softer hand than we've had in the past, but I still think that we're the global behemoth.

You can drill down on where hunger comes from and figure it out from there, but there absolutely has to be a sense of urgency if you're going to play tennis because you're the team - there's no one for you to rely on but yourself.

Without a doubt, there's huge satisfaction when a relatively smaller nation can take on a bigger nation and defeat them. There's a lot of pride in that.

I think all of us who kind of live within the sport recognize that Davis Cup certainly could be a little more visible if perhaps there were some adjustments made to it, and it was made a little bit more easy to understand for the fans, if there's a little bit more of a start and finish line.

Tennis is still very successful in spite of itself.

In America, we love to give people second chances too - as long as you admit you were wrong and come back and do it the right way.

You have to be extreme to be exceptional. I couldn't revel in being number one. I had to get to zero. When my fitness was at its peak, I was intimidating. I made guys cave in. They'd be dejected in the locker room after matches, and I'd go out for a run, as if it wasn't enough. I'd rub it in their faces. I meant to do that.

You have to look at each tie and look at what your options are.

Unbelievable, yet, what else could it be?

Tennis doesn't encourage any kind of intellectual development.