Tension is the greatest curse in sport. I've never had any tension. You give the best you have - you win or lose. What's the difference if you give all you've got to give?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In a sportsperson's life, pressure is always there; you have to learn to deal with it.
What winning is to me is not giving up, is no matter what's thrown at me, I can take it. And I can keep going.
That's one thing you learn in sports. You don't give up; you fight to the finish.
Losing feels worse than winning feels good.
The only one I feel pressure from is myself to go and give my all for every match and, obviously, I'm a competitor.
You fight, you try your best, but if you lose, you don't have to break five racquets and smash up the locker room. You can do those things, but when you've finished, nothing's changed. You've still lost. If something positive came from that, I probably would do it. But I see only negativity.
Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.
I played on teams with 24 guys pulling the rope one way and one guy pulling the other. I've seen how destructive it can be. I tell them, 'If 13 of you are insanely successful and one fails, we all lose.'
One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won't have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.
We play a sport. It's a game. At the end of the day, that's all it is, is a game. It doesn't make you any better or any worse than anybody else. So by winning a game, you're no better. By losing a game, you're no worse. I think by keeping that mentality, it really keeps things in perspective for me to treat everybody the same.