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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.

People think that there is so much money in tennis, but the reality is unless you're ranked in about the top 50 you don't earn much at all. It is hard to support yourself travelling the world, to be away from home most of the year and to pay for a coach to help you become a better player.

That $27,000 that a young player will now get just for making the main draw at the Australian Open is huge. It can set them up for a couple of months which at that level you really do need that kind of help. It sounds like a lot of money, but when you're travelling the world trying to make it as a tennis player, it doesn't last long.

Once you succeed in tennis, financially you become quite well off.

To be a professional tennis player you need to put in these sort of hours.

With tennis, you can go pick up a racket, take a lesson, and understand how much talent and skill it takes to be as good as the top pros. Same with golf: pick up a club. But not many can go out and get in a race car and experience a drive at over 200 miles an hour.

Tennis has to become everything to you if you're going to make it to the top. You have to live it.

If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports.

It is just a crazy life as a sportsman. My daughter, Sam, wants to go into tennis, and I tell her, 'No, you don't want to go into professional sport.'

As a child, I was lucky to have the support of my parents because starting a tennis career is a very expensive adventure.