Motivation Quote by Richard Krajicek

What Krajicek is really praising here isn’t a forehand or a trophy case, but an appetite: the ability to keep wanting the grind after the novelty has worn off. In tennis, “highest level” is less a place you arrive than a daily audition, and the sport’s cruellest feature is how often it asks you to start over in public. By framing Pete Sampras’s longevity as “very difficult, mentally,” Krajicek subtly shifts the hero narrative away from genetics and toward psychology: the private work of recommitting, match after match, year after year, to a life built on repetition and judgment.

The line also carries the insider’s respect of a peer. Krajicek wasn’t an awed fan; he was a contemporary who knew what it cost to stay sharp when your body aches, when the tour feels like an airport, when motivation gets negotiated like a contract. “Desire” in this context isn’t passion in the movie-trailer sense. It’s discipline that looks suspiciously like stubbornness: showing up to practice when you’re already world No. 1, resisting the temptation to protect your legacy by playing less, risking bad losses just to keep competing.

There’s a quiet correction embedded in the compliment, too. We talk about champions as if dominance is inevitable once talent appears. Krajicek reminds us dominance is maintained, not granted. Sampras’s edge, he implies, wasn’t only that he could win; it was that he could keep caring enough to try.