Tennis Quotes and Sayings

Tennis Quotes

Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.  ~Jacques Barzun

I have always considered tennis as a combat in an arena between two gladiators who have their racquets and their courage as their weapons.  ~Yannick Noah

Love is nothing in tennis, but in life it's everything.  ~Author Unknown

Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go.  ~Russell Lynes

Ladies, here's a hint.  If you're up against a girl with big boobs, bring her to the net and make her hit backhand volleys.  That's the hardest shot for the well-endowed.  ~Billie Jean King

Good shot, bad luck, and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis, though these, of course, can be slightly amplified.  ~Virginia Graham, Say Please, 1949

When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis.  I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.  ~Hugo L. Black

An otherwise happily married couple may turn a mixed doubles game into a scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  ~Rod Laver

The serve was invented so that the net could play.  ~Bill Cosby

Though your game is hardly the best

You can fray your opponent's nerves

By methodically bouncing the ball

At least ten times before your serves.

~Arnold J. Zarett

Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us?  It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault.  ~Nat Hentoff

But that won't give me a free hand to hold the beer.  ~Billy Carter, while being taught a two-handed backhand shot

The primary conception of tennis is to get the ball over the net and at the same time to keep it within bounds of the court; failing this, within the borders of the neighborhood.  ~Elliot Chaze

A perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility.  ~Billie Jean King, about tennis

Tennis begins with love.  ~Author Unknown

What a polite game tennis is.  The chief word in it seems to be "sorry" and admiration of each other's play crosses the net as frequently as the ball.  ~J.M. Barrie

Tennis is not a gentle game.  Psychologically, it is vicious.  That people are only just beginning to come to terms with this fact illustrates just how big a con trick has been perpetrated on the non-playing tennis public - and even a few players, usually losing players - for decades.  ~Richard Evans

The cunning competitor plays on the other party's guilt.  Continuously praise your opponent's shots, and you'll notice how he begins to press.  Self-beratement also serves to balance a guilty conscience for being successful and makes your opponent disturbed for upsetting you so.  If on occasion you call one of your opponent's "out" shots "in," then later on you can innocently call an "in" shot "out" on a crucial play.  Practice saying "Good try," sincerely; then you can call a lot of close shots "out" and get away with it.  ~Theodor Saretsky

Speed in tennis is a strange mixture of intuition, guesswork, footwork and hair-trigger reflexes.  Many of the players famed for quickness on court would finish dead last in a field of schoolgirls in a race over any distance more than ten yards.  ~Eugene Scott

In tennis the addict moves about a hard rectangle and seeks to ambush a fuzzy ball with a modified snow-shoe.  ~Elliot Chaze

It's difficult for most people to imagine the creative process in tennis.  Seemingly it's just an athletic matter of hitting the ball consistently well within the boundaries of the court.  That analysis is just as specious as thinking that the difficulty in portraying King Lear on stage is learning all the lines.  ~Virginia Wade

It's one-on-one out there, man.  There ain't no hiding.  I can't pass the ball.  ~Pete Sampras