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Justice & Law Quote by Goran Ivanisevic

"As soon as I step on the court I just try to play tennis and don't find excuses. You know, I just lost because I lost, not because my arm was sore"

About this Quote

Ivanisevic is selling a kind of old-school athletic honesty that sounds simple until you remember how rare it is in elite sports: the refusal to litigate a loss in public. “As soon as I step on the court” draws a hard line between the messy private world of aches, doubts, and bad weeks and the courtroom of competition, where the only admissible evidence is the scoreboard. It’s a philosophy disguised as a shrug.

The key move is rhetorical: he doesn’t deny soreness; he denies its power as narrative. “I just lost because I lost” is less about self-blame than about protecting the integrity of the contest. Excuses are tempting because they preserve identity: I’m still the better player, circumstances just intervened. Ivanisevic rejects that insurance policy. In doing so, he performs a version of toughness that’s as much moral as physical: if you choose to play, you choose to be judged by the result.

The subtext is also a jab at the tennis ecosystem, where injuries and “conditions” can become strategic messaging - softening criticism, influencing future opponents, managing sponsors, managing fans. His stance reads like an antidote to that PR reflex, a bid for credibility in a sport obsessed with fine margins and plausible deniability.

Context matters: Ivanisevic built a career on volatility - a massive serve, emotional swings, matches decided by a few points. For a player whose margins were always thin, owning the loss isn’t just humility; it’s clarity. No alibis, no rewrites, just the brutal simplicity of competition.

Quote Details

TopicDefeat
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Ivanisevic, Goran. (2026, January 17). As soon as I step on the court I just try to play tennis and don't find excuses. You know, I just lost because I lost, not because my arm was sore. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-soon-as-i-step-on-the-court-i-just-try-to-play-48495/

Chicago Style
Ivanisevic, Goran. "As soon as I step on the court I just try to play tennis and don't find excuses. You know, I just lost because I lost, not because my arm was sore." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-soon-as-i-step-on-the-court-i-just-try-to-play-48495/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"As soon as I step on the court I just try to play tennis and don't find excuses. You know, I just lost because I lost, not because my arm was sore." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-soon-as-i-step-on-the-court-i-just-try-to-play-48495/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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Goran Ivanisevic on accountability in sport
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About the Author

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Goran Ivanisevic (born September 13, 1971) is a Athlete from Croatia.

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