Open letter to all guys, with which I share a reflection by one of the greatest tennis players and sportsmen of all time🏅, Roger Federer:
🎾“Today everyone sees me as a quiet man, but my career starts were hallucinating. There was a coach who at my first tournament, after losing heavily, said to me, “At most you can make coffee in a bar with those hands. You're not talented boy.
That guy made me grow an anger inside, such that he radically changed my personality. I used to get up at night to go train outside my house. I would turn on the lights in the garden and pull the ball against the wall 100/1000 times with my racket. I tried, the right, the reverse, and I tried until I was convinced that that particular shot had come out perfect. I wanted to get there, but in front of me I saw too many impediments and people who didn't believe in my talent. There was even a time when I used to throw my racket around, and when I was sixteen, they even kicked me out of intensive training.
At 17, my family decided that I should go to the psychologist, because I had sudden outbursts of anger.
From that moment on, my growth was steady. Every time I go under pressure, I think about the effort I've done to get where I am now.
After becoming number one in 2004, the idea of quitting also came to my mind. After all, I had reached the maximum I could hope for.
Then I said to myself, “Continue Roger, because you don't know how to do anything else, everything that comes next consider it as a bonus.”
They also told me, that I'm one who cries too much after a victory and even after a defeat. There are people who don't smile when they win. And there are people who after winning, don't stop smiling for weeks. I am the kind of person who lets tears flow.
I drop them because I think back to when that assistant coach, he told me, that I wouldn't go on in tennis. I think about those moments, I think about how many sacrifices I made to get to the top. I have to thank him though, because especially in the early years of his career, he gave me the incentive to move forward. He gave me the inner strength to show the world who I could be.”
Never let yourself be down in sports, as well as in life. Dark moments will come, it's up to you to get up."
You guys already have the greatest gift you could wish for: your dreams and a passion for a game that can help you achieve them and grow in friendship and healthy ambition.
The only gift we 'adults' can give is to accompany you, with sensitivity and discretion, as much as possible, on this precious journey of yours, unique and unrepeatable, which will take you one day exactly where you deserved to be.
This is the greatest wish I can afford to make and I offer it to you with all my heart. ⚽️❤️
#playexperience #skininthegame