I've learned how to sleep on airplanes. When I'm taking a trans-Atlantic flight or going to a different continent, I will always read because reading puts me to sleep. When you watch a movie, you have all that light coming to your eyes, but with reading, I can't get through 15 or 20 pages.

Sometimes I think the easiest way to introduce what goes into managing the expenses of a tennis career is to take a look at another pro sport and notice some of the differences.

My expenses are largely a fixed, sunken cost, regardless of how much revenue I earn.

Usually I'm traveling for tennis, so the most important thing for me is to not get jet lag.

I want to be a top-10 player and I want to win a Grand Slam tournament.

A tournament pays me to show up because the fans want to see me and I move the needle at the box office? That's amazing. It's good for tennis, good for me and good for the event. If a sponsor wants to pay to put their company name on my shirt because they think I'm a strong ambassador for their brand? Heck yes.

I felt a ton of pressure in '08. A lot of great things were expected of me right out of the gate, and I brought some of that on myself with those great early results. But I wasn't a good enough player to make a run every fourth or fifth tournament. I wasn't as good a player as my ranking indicated.

Up until I was a junior at Georgia, I felt that when all was said and done, I'd at least have a college degree to fall back on when tennis was finished.

You're going to lose points and gain points throughout the year.