It's important to understand that you have to dedicate time to your sponsors, to have relationships with the people and the media, but it is also hard when you are first coming up and your primary focus is on tennis.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Tennis is all about mental toughness, and you have to keep your head in the game. I make time to relax away from competition pressures, travel and intense training schedules to make sure I'm looking after myself. Taking time out with family and friends helps to maintain the work-life balance everyone needs.
My dad said if you become a tennis professional just make sure you get into the top hundred, because you have to make a little bit of money. You make a living so you can pay your coaching and, you know, your travels.
I look at tennis as a bit of a platform to hopefully touch lives and encourage people.
I want my tennis to speak for everything.
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.
If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.
I think I will always stay involved in tennis and would like to give back by helping out young players. I have done a little commentary and may one day enjoy doing that again.
I have a passion for playing tennis and enjoy the workload and struggles of performing in this amazing global sport.
To stay interested in tennis, I have to mix it up with other things.
You can ask a lot of the people around me - I'm very demanding. I expect them to be as intense about my tennis on a daily basis as I am.