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you have a lot of energy, run up and down the field, and keep your head in the game, it doesn’t matter if you kick the ball with your toe instead of the side of your foot. I remember scoring a couple of goals that way back in school—it’s not the way you’re taught how to do it, but I did it anyway, the field was full of people, and no one was watching my form. No one cared; I was part of the team.
    On a tennis court, you’re out there all alone. People ask why I get so angry: This is a big part of it. I’m out there on the line, by myself, fighting to the death in front of people who are eating cheese sandwiches, checking their watches, and chatting with their friends about the stock market.
    To be honest, sometimes, when I look back, I don’t know how any of this ever happened to me. Sometimes I think I was pushed into something I didn’t really want to do. My parents saw that I was good at it and better all the time; they nudged me, and I went along. I was a good boy, an obedient boy. (For example, throughout my junior-high and early high-school years, I was terrified about trying any type of drug, at a time when a lot of my friends were experimenting with marijuana and other substances. In retrospect, staying away from drugs during those years probably kept my motivation sharp.)
    Tennis, obviously, turned out to be an incredible thing for me, an amazing roller-coaster ride, and a lot more good came out of it than bad, but the truth is that I didn’t really want to pursue it until it just pursued me. Many athletes seem truly to love to play their sport. I don’t think I ever felt that way about tennis. I looked forward to the practice and preparation, but the match itself was a constant battle for me, against two people: the other guy and myself.
    Once my professional career began, I certainly enjoyed the consequences of playing—the adulation, the feeling of contentment at being a professional athlete and then reaching the peak of my profession, the money that came from it.
    I guess I would correlate my story to those you hear about kids learning to play the piano. Every now and then, someone says, “I just loved to play six hours a day.” But mostly they say, “God, my parents forced me to play, they forced me to take these lessons; but I’m sure glad they made me do it.”
    Look at almost any of the great players. Would they have succeeded anyway if they hadn’t been pushed? That’s the unanswerable question. Would Agassi have been a great champion if he hadn’t been pushed by his father? Would Monica Seles, if her father hadn’t quit his job and pushed her? It’s difficult to say.
    I had dinner with Richard Williams during the 2000 French Open (yes, we do speak to each other!), and he told me, “Kids have no idea what they want to do most of the time.” Which is true. I had no idea I wanted to be a tennis player when I grew up. Richard’s attitude about Venus and Serena was “Look, I picked something great for them, something that’ll give them a tremendous living and a tremendous life. It’s crazy to think that they were capable of making that decision when they were young. So of course I pushed them, but they needed to be pushed.”
    And so my parents pushed me. It wasn’t in a bad way—you know the horror stories about tennis parents—but they were the driving force. Somehow, deep in my soul, however, I know there was a positive side to it. I seriously doubt I would’ve been the player I became if I hadn’t been forced into it in some way.
    My dad was the one, mainly. He seemed to live for my growing little junior career—he was so excited about having a son with some actual athletic talent. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he’d been the twelfth man on the varsity basketball team at Catholic University. (Sorry, Dad!)
    He worked very hard five days a week, but his real pleasure in life, it seemed, was coming to watch my weekend practice sessions at Port Washington.