Tennis Evolution Quotes

Maria Sharapova winning Wimbledon at 17, I don't think that's ever going to happen again. It's a different game now. I need to stay focused and work on my game, and it will come.

First of all, in any sport where you can measure distance, height speed and all of that, you see how athletes have changed their sport and made it better. I believe, with every generation, the sport has improved. Certainly, in the men's game, that has been the case. I think that I played Pete [Sampras] at his best, I played Roger [Federer] at his best.. I believe wholeheartedly that Roger and [Rafael] Nadal have pushed the game much further than myself or Pete ever did. Their options on the tennis court are considerably more than ours.

All sports are continuously developing, but what they all have in common is that the speed is increasing. That's also true of tennis; the ball is getting faster and faster.

I definitely think the way the game is transforming, becoming more and more athletic, guys are great athletes out here and relying on the physical skills more than their tennis skills, almost, sometimes. So for that reason, matching up with some of these guys, I can't keep up.

It has changed, quite a lot. It is very different now, there are quicker men, they are taller, stronger, have great stamina. The balls have also become faster. Tennis has now become a power sport. There is more depth in the game, as well, there are many more players than there used to be. The entire character of the game has changed.

The boys are so powerful off of the baseline now that they don't have to come to the net to finish points. That's the reason we went to the net. To finish the point. Nowadays, even the big guys can hit winners four feet behind the baseline.

Looking back, in comparison, there wasn't that much that you could do with a wooden racket. In my day, the matches were certainly much less demanding physically.

Tennis is more commercial these days.

Tennis is a traditional game. A big sport like tennis does not need too many changes. The game has become too fast, there are hardly any long, interesting rallies these days. So maybe slowing down the courts could help. But you can't really stop a sport from evolving.

I would like to see it go back to the wood racquets. To see the touch put back in tennis.

I started with the two-handed backand before Borg was famous.

I grew up in an age where women's tennis did not have similar prizes to men, and they played in complete obscurity, really, compared to the men's game.

If you look at tennis, the girls have become much more attractive; they wear makeup. In my generation, you were a tennis player. It wasn't like you had to look a certain way.

Professionalism in tennis ... only resulted in making billionaires out of rude children, producing an onslaught of moody defectors, and a lot of guys with hair that looks as if bats slept in it... Meanwhile, my head swims with the thought that I have watched tennis progress from Don Budge and Alice Marble to Farrah Fawcett becoming John McEnroe's mother-in-law.

I think it was the right time for me to retire because nowadays tennis is too incredibly fast and you can say that my style tennis went out of fashion.

My goal is to help make tennis transition to what's coming next and to be able to continue to grow rather than falling down, because no new fans come to our sport.

I think tennis needs to be reinvented. I think there is a space for two different tours. This exists in many other sports.

Every time the ATP or WTA speak about changing something, you see the reaction. So I think they're doing a good job because those people are still watching tennis 40 years later and they are still fans so I'm not sure they should change because I don't know how the fans would feel.

Why don't they go back to wood racquets? Then we would see the best tennis to be played.