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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There is this brutal side to tennis. It was invented as a game for kings and cardinals and people with a lot of power who didn't have to share the field with other players.
Tennis was a white, upper-class sport, and I wanted it to be treated like other sports were.
If I didn't play tennis I don't know where I'd be.
Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time.
Tennis is a hard sport. There is a lot of competition all year and you play alone.
Seems like most of the kids today are into other sports other than tennis.
Tennis was always sort of a - a learning. It was a vehicle for me to discover a lot about myself. And the things that I sort of discovered at times I not only didn't want to see it for myself but I certainly didn't want millions of people to see it.
Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.
Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis.
My father actually moved out from Chicago just so he could play tennis 365 days a year, so it was - it was a place we played every day. We played before school. We played after school. We woke up. We played tennis. We brushed our teeth in that order.
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