00:00You know, I think maybe once or twice that I've gotten in a wheelchair and you get an appreciation of
00:05how difficult it is and it's sort of inspirational.
00:10And then I feel lucky that I was able to do this and continue to be able to do this,
00:14you know, playing all these years.
00:17And obviously I was saying before that in the second week of majors, it's a big part of the event,
00:23the wheelchair event.
00:25So I'm proud of what they add to the tournaments.
00:28So, but I don't, you know, I'm having a tough enough time playing normally, you know, trying.
00:36So that's way too difficult.
00:38I just think there's a lot more attention to it, which I think is important.
00:42I think Martine can speak better to that than I can because, you know, when I was playing in the
00:49beginning, I don't remember seeing any wheelchair events, you know, at the majors.
00:52So I'm not exactly sure what year that came into play, but I think that's something that one of the
00:58things that tennis has done as well or better than everyone else.
01:02We've always had at the majors, the men and women play together, which is very different than any other sports.
01:08There was the equal prize money that came about.
01:10That's extremely different.
01:12And so we've been advanced in certain ways, and I think we've been advanced in the way we've handled, like,
01:18the wheelchair tennis and made it inclusive and part of our event.
01:21I was fortunate enough to be part of a time where it was, I felt like tennis was booming in
01:27the 70s and 80s.
01:28I had some great rivals.
01:30Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Yvonne Lendl.
01:33And I think it's extremely important in tennis to have rivalries, men and women.
01:39Gabby could speak to that as well with the women and when she played.
01:43But we obviously, arguably, I think we could all say that the three greatest players that ever played, played together,
01:51Rafa, Roger and Novak.
01:53And so that brought the game to a new level, and those rivalries were incredible.
01:58And we were thinking, oh, my God, we're in, you know, huge trouble because Roger stopped and then Rafa and
02:03Novak.
02:04I don't know how much longer he's going to play.
02:06So we're very lucky that Carlos came along, Alcaraz and Yannick Sinner as well.
02:12So that, you know, sort of made the pain of losing those players less and that we were able to
02:19look forward and go, wow, okay, it's just ultimately it's a great sport.
02:24And it's about the sport more than the person, even though those people added an incredible amount to our sport.
02:30So we're lucky they came along.
02:32Now we got to figure out a way to keep everyone healthy.
02:35Well, the women have done great, obviously.
02:37And I think part of that's because of the equal prize money.
02:39So, you know, I have six children, four of my six are girls.
02:43And growing up, I felt like they felt like on an equal level with young boys that they had a
02:48chance to play a sport if they loved it.
02:51And I think that's extremely important.
02:53I think that we should do more studying of what's happened recently in Italy, for example.
02:58They seem to be on a big upswing.
03:01How that's, you know, they're succeeding.
03:03Spain has had an incredible record, obviously, in the men's, particularly with Rafa and now Carlos.
03:08And now Rafael Hodar is coming along.
03:11So we need to sort of study.
03:13Our country is bigger.
03:15There's other sports that are bigger than, unfortunately, tennis, like American football, basketball.
03:22You call it football.
03:23We can put 20 kids on the size of a tennis court, whereas in tennis, you can put two to
03:28four kids.
03:29So some of it's economics.
03:31But I think we're making progress and we're closer now.
03:35The players that we have, you know, I think the game is faster than it's ever been.
03:39So you need better and better athletes.
03:41You know, someone that's very fast, men's and women.
03:44And so that's, you know, if you don't have that, you're screwed.
03:48Unless you're seven feet tall and serve 150 miles an hour.
03:51But I wouldn't know about that.
