People know me. I'm not going to produce any cartwheels out there. I'm not going to belong on Comedy Central. I'll always be a tennis player, not a celebrity.
Where I fall down is my short game. I don't practice enough, and when I have to take a half swing from 50 yards out, that's trouble.
I loved Wimbledon and what it meant, but the surface felt uncomfortable. I just didn't like it, I was a hard-court guy, a Californian kid.
After I went through two years of not winning an event, what kept me going was winning one more major. Once I won that last U.S. Open, I spent the next six months trying to figure out what was next. Slowly my passion for the sport just vanished. I had nothing left to prove.
It's not easy to retire at 31. In one respect I was glad I was done. But after a few years of having fun, I got a little restless. When you're 33, 34, and you don't have a focus, you can get kind of lost. As a man, you feel a little bit unfulfilled.
I let my racket do the talking. That's what I am all about, really. I just go out and win tennis matches.
