Alexa Mennen Quotes

I retired because I had a knee injury, my cartilage was wearing out, it was painful and I couldn`t put in the four hours of practice each day that I needed to.

I think each player and myself live things differently because I have no physical effort to make.

More than specific memories of achievements, for me I remember the feeling you get when you were just at your very best - when you felt like you were floating across the court and could put the ball wherever you wanted.

Suddenly in the end when it`s over, you feel a big weight on your shoulders. That`s the role of the captain. Unfortunately, it`s sometimes like that in sport.

It`s better to have done because then you know what the player is going through and you understand the pressure, but then on the other hand I know a lot of people that were good players but not good coaches, and vice versa.

When you get to 15 or 16 and you are the best in your area or your country, you need to play twice a day for five or six days a week.

Anything is possible as long as you have the passion.

When we want to reach a dream for the second time, you want it to come true, when you try so hard, you are so close to achieving it, it makes things very difficult to live with afterwards.

It`s a tough world out there and all the guys are fighting hard and the competition is really tough.

The bathroom break isn`t that big a deal, but I have seen guys taking injury time-outs for shoulder injuries, ankles, everything, and it`s too much.

There are some guys you have problems beating because of their style - I always had difficulties with guys like Michael Chang and Andre Agassi because their returns were so good and they played so well in defence.

I felt like I couldn`t work as I wanted to, my level of play was going down more because I wasn`t training enough than because I was getting older.

I had a coach that was not a great player, but he taught with kids and juniors so that by the time he was 50 he was great. He helped me make the top 5 in the world and yet he wasn`t a great player himself.

I think our strength is this strong relationship we have all together.

You should just enjoy it, but as soon as you decide that it is going to be your career, no matter whether you want to be a doctor or an architect or anything else, you need to work 5 hours a day.

When you are very little tennis should be fun, it should be a game.

If you win, fine, if you don`t, you try again next year.

But whatever happens, when you leave London you feel like a winner because it`s a great venue and it`s so nice to be there with all the guys.

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

You can be a little lonely because it`s an individual sport.

But I still serve pretty big and that`s one of my biggest weapons, so if my shoulder holds up and I can count on it, I can win a few matches and then you never know how the other guys are going to react to the fatigue and the length of the matches.

When you are a professional sportsman all the guys are great competitors in the top 50.

If you lived the doubles, as I did, which was very stressful, you are sitting down in a chair experiencing a match without being able to hold a racquet in your hands.

As an example, for every 1,000 kids we help in France between the ages of 12 and 14, the UK probably helps 50. So, we have so many more players.