A tournament pays me to show up because the fans want to see me and I move the needle at the box office? That's amazing. It's good for tennis, good for me and good for the event. If a sponsor wants to pay to put their company name on my shirt because they think I'm a strong ambassador for their brand? Heck yes.
We never got much in the way of material things, but if you can be spoiled by good cooking, my mom spoiled me three times a day all my life.
I've learned how to sleep on airplanes. When I'm taking a trans-Atlantic flight or going to a different continent, I will always read because reading puts me to sleep. When you watch a movie, you have all that light coming to your eyes, but with reading, I can't get through 15 or 20 pages.
I want to be a top-10 player and I want to win a Grand Slam tournament.
My expenses are largely a fixed, sunken cost, regardless of how much revenue I earn.
I have a coach and I have a chiropractor, who works to keep me healthy. I pay their salaries. I pay for their flights as we travel around the world on a weekly basis, and I pay for their hotels and meals while we're on tour.
Sometimes I think the easiest way to introduce what goes into managing the expenses of a tennis career is to take a look at another pro sport and notice some of the differences.
As a tennis player, or any professional athlete, our career has a shelf life. I don't want to waste any opportunities, I don't want to look back on it when I'm 45 and think I could have done a lot more.
The hardest part about traveling for work is that I'm a big guy, so traveling is sometimes uncomfortable for me.
I felt a ton of pressure in '08. A lot of great things were expected of me right out of the gate, and I brought some of that on myself with those great early results. But I wasn't a good enough player to make a run every fourth or fifth tournament. I wasn't as good a player as my ranking indicated.
I love building a team around me, and being able to support a group of people is one of the best feelings I've come to know during my career; I imagine this is what a lot of business owners can relate to this.
That's why I enjoy Davis Cup, and I really enjoyed college tennis. It's very special. You want to go out there and compete your hardest, because you don't want to let anyone down. You want to absolutely give it your all for your team. And that's sort of the mentality I've taken to pro tennis.
When I fly overseas, I usually fly business class. If not, my knees are going to be at my chin.
I've done a good job putting some meat on my bones since my freshman year of college. It's taken a lot of work. I was just under 200 pounds my freshman year; I was 6'8' and 198 pounds.
Usually I'm traveling for tennis, so the most important thing for me is to not get jet lag.
It's awesome to have the crowd on your side.
In a tiebreaker, you generally have a lot of adrenaline running through. It's all about just holding your serve, trying to hold two serves at a time, trying to stay ahead in the tiebreaker, constantly put pressure on my opponent.
If someone had told me at fourteen that I'd be six-ten, I might have stuck with basketball, in all seriousness.
The good wins are still great, and you are on cloud nine when that happens, but the losses sting.
I know where I'm ranked, but I don't look at it that much, I don't study it that much. You really can't look at it that way, you've got to try to win as many matches as you can, and it's cliche, but you've got to take it one at a time.
