JIM COURIER

The dumber you are on court, the better you're going to play.

I've been lucky enough to primarily work for myself over the years.

I think there's no reason the Davis Cup couldn't be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.

If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.

The reason I didn't take the baseball route is because they don't have rankings for baseball players.

I will do everything in my power to make sure people are aware that our team is out there fighting the good fight for the tennis fans of the United States.

Tennis doesn't encourage any kind of intellectual development.

It's hard for anyone in the 24-hour news cycles that we all live in now to follow something that the first round is played in March and the final finishes in December. I understand the challenges there.

I knew I was the second-best tennis player in the state of Florida and No. 8 in the United States of America when I was 12 years old and I couldn't tell you what I was in baseball, but I liked my chances in tennis of getting a scholarship to college.

I really try not to read the tennis articles, because a lot of times they're guessing at how a player is feeling, and I like to keep myself kind of open minded about how I'm feeling, rather than have someone else explain to me what's going on.

Unbelievable, yet, what else could it be?

I think all of us who kind of live within the sport recognize that Davis Cup certainly could be a little more visible if perhaps there were some adjustments made to it, and it was made a little bit more easy to understand for the fans, if there's a little bit more of a start and finish line.

I think all of us are shaped by the choices we make.

The airplane has had a big impact on my life.

It is very dangerous to have your self-worth riding on your results as an athlete.

We lose a lot of young athletes because tennis is such a difficult sport. It's not like kicking a soccer ball.

When you lack cohesion, it becomes difficult to have a clear marketing strategy.

There are certainly great cities in America that don't have ATP and WTA events. Our fans are very provincial. They want American champions.

If you don't want to practice, unless you have a hard-nosed coach, you don't have to.

America has an interesting global role, don't we? It certainly seems to be changing. Our government right now has a softer hand than we've had in the past, but I still think that we're the global behemoth.

The good news is I have time.

Trophies separate the winners from losers, and life is about winning and losing. Go into business and you see. You're competing every day.

You can look directly at the NFL and see how successful they've become because they have central control, central voice, and it doesn't mean that the owners don't have a say, but the commissioner runs it, and he's the one who speaks for them when they go out and do commercial deals.

Getting to number one in the world without a coach is highly unlikely.

If I had to choose one man to play for my life, it would be Nadal.