Lindsay Davenport Quotes

In Canada, for boys, your identity is built on hockey. It's your social position; it's everything. And I was the worst hockey player of Canada.

I've worked so hard to eliminate the inner geek from my life. I suddenly realize I have no patience for those people who still have their geeks showing. Now I see why being 'normal' has been so important to me.

Everybody was pressuring me to play basketball, so I was like, 'OK, I'll do it.'

Competitive sports may be where exercise becomes 'fun' for children who are good at it, but for those who are less talented, it is where exercise becomes not only physically demanding but also emotionally painful and socially humiliating.

For some reason as a kid being a smart athlete didn't seem like the right thing, because you didn't fit in. You didn't want to be too smart because you'd be a nerd. But then you didn't want to be too dumb either because then you didn't get the grades you needed to play.

Basketball made me happy to be tall. And more secure about myself than I ever would have been without it.

I think, growing up, I was seen as the perfect power forward. For a long time, I thought maybe I was supposed to be a basketball player.

When I went to high school, an all-boys' school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn't make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down.

I play football, and most football players are camera shy. We just want to be left alone; we just want to stick to what we do.

On our swim team, they had something called the 'developmental meet.' I didn't know it was a meet only for the worst kids so that they could get a ribbon, and I'd show up with my friend who was also a terrible swimmer, and we would be amazed that the best kids hadn't bothered to show up. I didn't get it until after college.

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.

In front of the world, all of a sudden I'm a great athlete and I'm put into an environment with 25 other women and I'm expected to go to team meals, team functions.

I don't want to be too cool. You get so caught up with whether you're doing it right.

Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.

The last thing I want my child to see is Dad running around in the middle of the pack. That would really upset me. And that would upset him. I would be embarrassed to take him to school with kids saying, 'Hey, how'd your dad do this weekend?' 'Well, he finished fifth or sixth'.

Coos Bay is a sports-minded town. You had to be an athlete to be somebody.

I'm not like the skinniest guy, so I feel like I should at least get 10 rebounds for our team a game.

As a kid, I spent a lot of my mental energy hiding who I was and attempting to fit in.

I've always prided myself on being a football player.

Everyone has a different view on football, but I didn't have a fear that I wouldn't be good enough in England.

When my friends started to care about getting girlfriends, I really didn't. I started to think, literally, 'What's wrong with me?' and, 'Why can't I be normal like everybody else?'

I feel like I should be an NBA player.

Football doesn't bother me. I just enjoy it. It's when you have to go to clubs and sing and do initiations and all that stuff. That's when I get nervous.

I grew up with sports, but I was definitely not good enough to become a professional athlete - I just loved the storytelling aspect of it.

As a player, I don't want to come off the field.