TMS MONTE CARLO

April 22, 2004

Marat Safin

MARAT SAFIN: Yeah, a little bit. Very difficult, is very difficult for me to play against him - actually, for everybody to play on hard courts, indoors, grass. But on clay, it's completely different story. He really serves well. But for him, here, it's too slow so he cannot play.

MARAT SAFIN: You try to do everything. You try to get all the balls back so it doesn't get complicated. So basically you do whatever you want. If it becomes a good shot, great for me. But you try to put all the returns back, let him play from the rally, because it can get very complicated and then it's difficult to play.

MARAT SAFIN: But I don't know.

MARAT SAFIN: Calleri beat Martin?

MARAT SAFIN: Still, I have one match to go to meet the -- they gonna have a difficult match, still. Nalbandian, I don't know if he gonna beat Santoro. Then Coria has to play against the winner of them. So still long way to go.

MARAT SAFIN: Different kind of players?

MARAT SAFIN: From each other or from other players?

MARAT SAFIN: It's good. It's better to get through this way than making a lot of kilometers against Argentinians or Spanish.

MARAT SAFIN: Yep. I hope it will be successful.

MARAT SAFIN: This guy is very, very strange. I mean, he can play great tennis but then all of a sudden he can lose to anybody. But I think he has great hands, very fast. I mean, he's very skinny, but he's really, really fast guy and he really plays well. I mean, he beat very easy Corretja. He beat very easy Ljubicic. So he must be playing well. Who he plays next round?

MARAT SAFIN: Well, it's tough match, Moya or Chela. He can give trouble to any of them. It's gonna be interesting match tomorrow also.