Tennis Motivational Quotes

The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame?

How much discipline? In January 2012, I beat Nadal in the finals of the Australian Open. The match lasted five hours and fifty-three minutes—the longest match in Australian Open history, and the longest Grand Slam singles final in the Open Era. Many commentators have called that match the single greatest tennis match of all time. After I won, I sat in the locker room in Melbourne. I wanted one thing: to taste chocolate. I hadn’t tasted it since the summer of 2010. Miljan brought me a candy bar. I broke off one square—one tiny square—and popped it into my mouth, let it melt on my tongue. That was all I would allow myself. That is what it has taken to get to number one.

Spectacular performances are preceded by spectacular preparation

Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance. “People who play tennis once a week for years don’t get any better if they do the same thing each time,

All you need are a pair of tennis shoes and motivation to change the course of your life.

You’ve got to go through hell... Before you get to heaven... Let’s do 10 more

In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.

What is troubling is not just being average but settling for it. Everyone knows that average-ness is, for most of us, our fate. And in certain matters—looks, money, tennis—we would do well to accept this. But in your surgeon, your child's pediatrician, your police department, your local high school? When the stakes are our lives and the lives of our children, we want no one to settle for average.

80% of people’s complaints are about situations that can be changed in one day. The other 20% are about real complaints that can’t be changed, and then what does complaining about it do? So you’re unhappy about the situation you’re in? Change it. Now. Cut the ropes. Don’t text her back. Change your job. Learn a new skill. Sell your house and move to a new city. Start over. Get healthy, start running. Or play tennis. Or anything that gets you moving. Cut out processed food. Cut out sugar. Read books. Listen to audiobooks. Or watch YouTube videos. You live in a time where there are zero excuses. You can do anything you want! You want a new life? Well, you can have it? But no one will hand it to you on a silver plate, you will have to stand up from that couch and go get it yourself. Because no one else cares. No one cares about how you live your life but you.

Follow these steps—over and over again for a decade—and you just might become a master: • Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance. “People who play tennis once a week for years don’t get any better if they do the same thing each time,” Ericsson has said. “Deliberate practice is about changing your performance, setting new goals and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each time.” • Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition matters. Basketball greats don’t shoot ten free throws at the end of team practice; they shoot five hundred. • Seek constant, critical feedback. If you don’t know how you’re doing, you won’t know what to improve. • Focus ruthlessly on where you need help. While many of us work on what we’re already good at, says Ericsson, “those who get better work on their weaknesses.” • Prepare for the process to be mentally and physically exhausting. That’s why so few people commit to it, but that’s why it works.

Benjamin Bloom, an eminent educational researcher, studied 120 outstanding achievers. They were concert pianists, sculptors, Olympic swimmers, world-class tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists. Most were not that remarkable as children and didn’t show clear talent before their training began in earnest. Even by early adolescence, you usually couldn’t predict their future accomplishment from their current ability. Only their continued motivation and commitment, along with their network of support, took them to the top.

I love your tennis skirt darling you look beautiful but so much work needed to be done on you in order to suit it nicely.

When kids work hard at something they love and find challenging, they enter a state of what’s come to be called “flow,” where time passes quickly and their attention is completely engaged, but they’re not stressed. When you’re in flow, levels of certain neurochemicals in your brain—including dopamine—spike.6 These neurochemicals are like performance-enhancing drugs for the brain. You think better in flow, and you process information faster. To be fully engaged this way, the activity has to be challenging enough not to be boring, but not so difficult that it’s overly stressful. Think of playing tennis against a partner who is not nearly at your level. Completely boring. If you’re playing against someone who is vastly more skilled, it’s so punishing it’s not enjoyable. A partner with whom you’re well matched? That’s where you find your flow. So when you see an eight-year-old highly focused on building a Lego castle, lips pressed in concentration, what she is actually doing is getting her brain used to being motivated. She is conditioning her brain to associate intense enjoyment with highly focused attention, practice, and hard work. Just as frequent exposure to high levels of stress can sculpt a young brain in ways that are unhealthy, frequent exposure to states of flow can sculpt a young brain to be motivated and focused.

The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty. If you love tennis and try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. It’s too easy. You’ll win every point. In contrast, if you play a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will quickly lose motivation because the match is too difficult. Now consider playing tennis against someone who is your equal. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few. You have a good chance of winning, but only if you really try. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. This is a challenge of just manageable difficulty and it is a prime example of the Goldilocks Rule.

When I can’t get to the sea water or to a tennis court, or out for a long, brisk walk, I work on stretch exercises at home. One that I do many times a day as I move around my apartment involves standing for a moment with my back again a wall. I dig my heels into the floor, stand straight, and place the palm of my hand between the small of my back and the wall. Keeping my chin level, I pull the crown of my head toward the ceiling. At the same time I push the small of my back toward the wall until there’s no longer room for my hand.

Can you be totally intrinsically motivated? “Not necessarily, it’s not always black and white,” says Brad Feld, partner at the Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm Foundry Group. I consider Brad a good friend and an expert at understanding the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I met Brad through a good friend, Bing Gordon, the founder of EA Sports, and we quickly became friends. As he explains, “People fall along a continuum.” Brad uses tennis star Rafael Nadal as an example. He sees Nadal as having a blend of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Nadal clearly likes to win. He likes the limelight and the attention he gets. “Yet . . . Nadal, after he loses a match, he’s a very gracious loser, acknowledging that the other guy played better and did an awesome job,” Brad explained to me. Nadal recharges his battery by heading off to the beach, and then he is back in training for the next tournament. His daily training regime includes four hours of playing tennis on court, two and a half hours in the gym, and a strict stretching routine. He’s continued this training whether he is ranked at number one, five, or seven in the world. It’s for him, not for the ranking. Brad also believes something I’ve really taken to heart—that one person can’t truly motivate another person, a concept especially important in business when you manage people. “I can’t motivate another person, but [I can] create a context in which they are motivated, and part of being a leader is to understand what motivates other people,” explained Brad. “So if I’m the leader of an organization that you’re a part of, I have to understand what motivates you. Then I can create a context in which to motivate you. Most people struggle to understand how somebody else is motivated because they do it based on what motivates them.” Brad’s words ring true: While my own inspiration has come from various people, none of them actually motivated me. When I was extrinsically motivated, it was based largely on what others thought about me. My inner desire to win was based on extrinsic rewards. Only I had the power to change that.