Motivation Quote by Richard Krajicek

There is no grandstanding here, just the blunt accounting of what elite sport actually costs. Krajicek’s phrasing - “really started to kick in” - lands like an unwanted opponent: injuries aren’t a footnote to competition, they’re a force that arrives on its own schedule. The casual cadence masks a brutal reality. When your elbow “gave a lot of problems,” it’s not merely pain; it’s the collapse of a whole professional identity built on repetition, timing, and trust in your own body.

The line is doing two things at once. On the surface, it’s autobiography: a timeline marker around the year 2000, a specific joint, a precise absence (“20 months”). Underneath, it’s an argument against the mythology of athletic continuity. Tennis, especially at the top, sells an image of sleek inevitability - the champion as machine, season after season. Krajicek punctures that. The sentence turns the body into the central plot, and the plot is maintenance, not glory.

The detail of “had to take” is key: this isn’t a sabbatical, it’s enforced exile. Twenty months is long enough for rankings to evaporate, for younger players to claim the future, for your own muscle memory to feel foreign. Coming “back into the game” reads less like returning to work and more like reapplying for membership in a world that moved on without you.