When Sweden's Jan-Ove Waldner travels to China to play table tennis, he is mobbed when he leaves his hotel as if he were a rock star walking around Manhattan or a soccer star walking around Europe.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When it was time for a player to go, he went.
I think almost every player has a few very good friends on tour. Mine are: Yves Allegro, Roger Federer, Michael Lammer, and Ivo Klec.
It's silly to say it about a tennis player, but I'm an unbelievable hero in Germany. And Germany needs heroes more than any place.
He is not someone who went off to play in Europe and only a few Americans follow. He has the potential to be on magazine covers and more newspaper coverage.
Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It's cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson's home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.
If you see a player out in public having dinner, chances are he's with his boring money manager or some boring rich guy he hopes to design a golf course for.
The European Tour plays all over the world: from the U.K. to China, from Korea to South Africa, and from the Middle East to southeast Asia.
It's very expensive to be a professional tennis player with all the travel and the flights and the hotels and everything.
I'm the Bjorn Boerg of table tennis.
In Sweden, stardom is looked upon as phony. You walk to the theater every day like everybody else.