RESPECT RAFA

“Yeah. Strung doesn't do anything because when you go in altitude, it loosens the strings. Right? So you're up 50,000 feet in the air for fourteen hours. You get there, your racket is going to be many pounds looser, than it is. So I just went to Brazil recently to to play, and I didn't wanna have to land and then string rackets and it's one less step. So I strung them way tighter here so that you land in it.”

“Correct. We all have regrets. I mean, it was Reebok. It wasn't an original idea, and also I didn't say no. It's on me. It's my fault. It's regrettable. I also wore a visor. I had spiky hair. I once ripped my shirt after I won a match. Like, think of a doucheier thing to do. I'd be like, that kid's a shithead.”

“Flying my first international flight after 09:11. There were three people on the airplane. So you're flying overseas, and you have this entire thing, and it was there was nobody to be seen. And it was the craziest thing I've I think I've ever seen. Like, that that was probably the craziest travel day in in, like, a very sad, eerie kind of retrospective sort of way. There may have been more flight attendants than passengers.”

“You never traveled with a trophy. It just got sent. There's no listen. You're going for you're going for two months on the road. There is not a lot of room in your suitcase for a big metal, thing. So there was no concern, not even for a second on, like, I need this trophy with me every step of the way home. You kinda just trust Belle that it would make its way to you at some point.”

“We have to remember that 95% of the tour is never in charter jet territory unless you're hitching a ride with someone or you're combining forces at the end of an event. I would venture to say, like, no one, pretty much no one on tour would ever charter overseas. Someone who's two fifty in the world does not have that support system and does not have, and by and large, the team that's going to map everything out.”

“I remember flying from Charleston, South Carolina where there's not, like, direct flights anywhere, finishing a semifinal of Davis Cup on Sunday, flying to LA that night, staying overnight in LA on Sunday, arriving in Bangkok early Monday morning and having to play or maybe early Monday or Tuesday morning, whatever day. I landed and then had to play the next night. And I remember getting, like, smelling salts on the on the switchover because it's like a you're just kind of out of it.”

“So he wins the first set against Rafa seven six. And I remember being in a locker room, and I'd be like, dude, let's see. Go see him. I got I got a thousand bucks. Where Sam does the bull dance? If he does the bull dance, he won the set and didn't do it. And that's probably the right move.”

“Found my passport at the bottom of an elevator shaft in Russia one time. It fell out of like, I had it, like, inside of a book, and I get I went from, like, breakfast to, like, you know, team room. We were there for Davis Cup. And it fell, but it fell right through the crease of the elevator shaft. So we're looking for it for, like, a day. You know how good it is to think that you've lost your passport in Russia?”