There are people who love you and people who hate you, but for me, more so, people only think they know me by how I act or perform on a tennis court.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If people hate me they hate me.
It's that I have a good personality and am a good tennis player.
I'm not saying I'm something special. I might play a little better tennis than other people, but it is because I was given the chance, and not many people are.
There may be a lot of people out there who don't like me who don't even know me. But there are quite a few people who like me because they know me. I'm not a bad guy by any means. I can't do anything about people hating me for no reason.
For the first couple of years I played really bad tennis. It was so bad that they booed me off the court.
So there is not a lot about me that you don't know other than that I play table tennis. I'm great, I'm great at table tennis! You will look at me and go, 'How does that dude know how to play that well?'
Tennis is an individual sport, and I am quite a self-conscious person.
To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.
I'm more in that Rafa Nadal high-energy high-octane mold out there. I wear that emotion on the court. That's how I play my best tennis. People either like that or not. And I can't change that: that's who I am on a tennis court.
Even though now I'm pretty popular in my country and tennis is the No. 1 sport, and I'm very flattered that the people recognise me and come up and give me compliments, I'm more a person who likes to have privacy and peace.