Pete Sampras Quotes about Sports

The difference of great players is at a certain point in a match they raise their level of play and maintain it. Lesser players play great for a set, but then less.

Anybody who has played sports and says they have never choked is lying to you.

Golfers are forever working on mechanics. My tennis swing hasn't changed in 10 years.

By putting pressure on myself to develop a great game, I had less pressure to win. These days, I tell kids that the way I grew up, it wasn't about winning. It was about playing well, about playing the "right" way. That approach helped me enjoy the game and develop mine to its maximum potential.

In tennis, you can make a couple of mistakes and still win. Not in golf. I played three rounds in that Tahoe event, and I was drained. Mentally, not physically.

There is no doubt about how hard it is to stay on top in any sport, but to do it in an individual sport for the majority of your career, it is not easy.

When you retire you want to get as far away as possible from the game for a couple of years.

People know me. I'm not going to produce any cartwheels out there. I'm not going to belong on Comedy Central. I'll always be a tennis player, not a celebrity.

When I tied the record five years in a row, even over in Europe, it wasn't really talked about. It is disap-pointing because it is one of the toughest things to do in sports.

After I went through two years of not winning an event, what kept me going was winning one more major. Once I won that last U.S. Open, I spent the next six months trying to figure out what was next. Slowly my passion for the sport just vanished. I had nothing left to prove.

If Davis Cup was a little bit less or once every two years, I would be more inclined to play. But the way it is now, it is too much tennis for me.

There's always one shot that I can rely on when I'm not hitting the ball that well, is my serve.

I am going to hold serve the majority of the time. It is nice to have a little time to return serve.

Where I fall down is my short game. I don't practice enough, and when I have to take a half swing from 50 yards out, that's trouble.