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.

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.

People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.

I never lost a tennis match, I just ran out of time

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.

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.