Some players are constantly changing racquets, fiddling with them. It's not that I'm not specific with my racquets, but I feel that I'm not as obsessed with some of that stuff as many of the other players are.
Growing up, I did quite a bit of reading on the mental side. My dad, who coached me, had us doing a lot of different types of mental work, like visualization. I read a couple of tennis books that talked about calming your nerves, belief, visualization, relaxing, breathing.
Coming from a country that loves tennis, actually, there are a lot of people who play. We definitely face a lot of challenges when it comes to producing tennis players.
Most of the time, I'm playing right-handed players, so it's a little easier to adjust going back to a righty.
It's funny because, growing up, I found inspiration from watching Steffi Graf and Amanda Coetzer, a South African who was in the top 10 for many years. Oh, and then there's someone I've gotten to know over the last few years: Martina Navratilova.
With all the lead tape, my racquet is heavier than the model you're going to find off the rack. It's got most of its weight in the throat of the racquet; it's not too head-heavy. I don't like the feeling of a racquet that's so head-heavy I can't maneuver it around so well.
