Nothing is like being out there and playing and performing and winning - nothing. But to have an interest in the player? The nerves and everything that goes with it? Seeing what he's learned and how he's done it? That's the second best thing to playing. I think.

There is only one number one. It is a lonely spot but it has got the best view of all.

I am not looking to be understood or liked. Like me or not, I don't care. I am an outsider, that is the way I was brought up.

I don't go out there to love my enemy. I go out there to squash him.

Nothing's perfect along the way [in life], and you ride the ups and downs. It's how you come out of those and continue on that I guess really matters.

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

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.