Tennis doesn't owe me anything. Tennis is one of the fairest sports. It's given me so many extraordinary feelings.

What if, when Tracy Austin writes that after her 1989 car crash, 'I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it,' the statement is not only true but exhaustively descriptive of the entire acceptance process she went through?

The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

A lot of sports, over the years, become a game. If you are into tennis, it becomes part of your lifestyle.

I've been involved with O'Connell tennis since the mid-80s. I've also been involved in coaching a number of sports in Northern Virginia since the 1960s. I guess you could say that I'm a kid that hasn't grown up.