Motivation Quote by Stefan Edberg

Edberg’s line lands with the calm of someone who’s already been booed, rattled, and asked to smile through it. He’s not romanticizing a hostile crowd; he’s naming a particular kind of noise: the Connors noise. In the 1980s and early ’90s, playing Jimmy Connors often meant playing an arena that wanted a storyline more than a winner. Connors was a master at turning spectators into an auxiliary weapon, whipping up volume as pressure, using tempo shifts and little bursts of showmanship to recruit the stands.

Edberg’s intent reads like diplomacy with teeth. “Very, very loud” is blunt, almost clinical, but he immediately pairs it with “exciting,” a refusal to grant the crowd the power to define the moment as unfair or ugly. That’s athlete-speak doing real work: he’s signaling professionalism (no complaints, no victimhood) while also quietly acknowledging the asymmetry. He knows the audience isn’t neutral, and he’s telling you he’s prepared for it.

The subtext is about control. Edberg’s game - serve-and-volley precision, quick points, rhythm - can be disrupted by chaos, delays, and emotional surges. By reframing the roar as “exciting,” he’s converting a destabilizer into adrenaline, a tactic as much mental as physical. It’s also a subtle compliment to Connors’s cultural force: not just a rival, but a phenomenon capable of changing the atmosphere of a match.

What makes the quote work is its double register: courteous on the surface, competitive underneath. Edberg isn’t praising the crowd; he’s defusing it.