U.S. OPEN

August 30, 1994

Michael Stich

MICHAEL STICH: I mean, I played in New Haven, I think New Haven wasn't that much faster than here, but the problems here with the courts is they are all different; you have the outside courts where you practice, that's pretty fast, and then you go -- the Grandstand is even slower, I think, and the Stadium is not that fast. But, I mean, you have to adjust your game and it's -- I saw a little of that match and I thought, especially in the first set, it was great tennis and you have to pay all the credit to Richey because he's not a baseliner normally, he's a guy who comes in as well. So you just have to adjust a little bit. But for me, I'm trying to change a little bit anyway, I don't try to play serve and volley all the time because it is not fast enough for that, so you have to really try to make the best out of it.

MICHAEL STICH: Stadium and Grand Slam mostly like every year they resurface. They don't do that with the outside courts. It would be expensive, they don't need to do that. It's something you can't change. If the court is a little slower than the other ones, you have to deal with it and just make the best out of it.

MICHAEL STICH: Every court -- you play on clay in Rome and you play on clay in Hamburg and you play on clay in Munich, there's always a difference. The practice courts are the same normally, but it doesn't matter to anyone. You know, that once you go on court and once you practice on stadium before, let's say as a top player should have done anyway to get used to the surface, then you know how it's going to be played and you know what you have to do. And losing 7-6 in the fifth set and having played a pretty decent match, I think it was not exciting point.

MICHAEL STICH: I'm very happy. I did 100% better than I did last year and that is a big achievement for me also for the other Grand Slams. I'm happy to go through the first round. It's normally the most difficult round anyway and I played an opponent that can play really well. He proved it in Indianapolis, he played fine there, so I was happy. I didn't play great tennis, but I played solid, I stayed cool and mentally I was there and I played the good shots. I needed them.

MICHAEL STICH: Yes, for me it's the toughest of the four Grand Slams without a doubt. All the things you have to deal with here at the U.S. Open. It is not just the tournament. If you stay in the City, it is not like really relaxing to go stay in Manhattan, once you go outside. And so you have to deal with all those things and once you get out here you have to wait for a long, long time and those matches can take a while and it's just very noisy, very crowded and everything. So I think for me, the U.S. Open is the most difficult to win -- to play and obviously, for a lot of players who would really like to win because it is so difficult to play.

MICHAEL STICH: I would put it this way, we have -- in the last 15 years we had very, very good 15 years of tennis. We had great players, great tennis, the economy, all the business, they went with the growing perspective of the tennis sport. And now, you know, you can't just keep going like this. It's just a normal thing like this in the economy that once you reached a point where it's going to stop and might go back a little, but might go up again a little bit, but I think it's just a normal thing. There are so many sports out there, and if you had interest in a long time for tennis and you see golf might be a little more interesting now, people change. And I think that's fair enough. And I think it is not a problem. We don't have the players. I think we have the players with great personalities. Most of the guys are still pretty young, so they have plenty of time to become the characters everybody is talking about. I think it's just change of time which you have to accept and make the best out of it. Still, everybody is playing great tennis and money isn't involved.

MICHAEL STICH: For sure there is. No question about it. You can see from Germany it started all like in '85, '86, when Steffi and Boris came up, there was a big boom in tennis. Everybody wanted to play tennis and it became popular. But now, everybody is used to it. It is not that fascinating, whereas a sport in Germany now, young swimmers or ice skaters or something like that who are attractive, they are interesting, so the people just take them and they just -- you know, they don't have that -- they don't focus that much on Boris or Steffi or me anymore because tennis has been there for ten years now. And that's a long time. You have that in -- sometimes in soccer, years where soccer is the greatest sport of all, and another year people don't attend it as much as they used to do. And you've got to give those people a break and let them enjoy other sports as well. I think tennis is a great sport and still people watching.

MICHAEL STICH: Who said that?

MICHAEL STICH: Yeah. I can't deny it. I think it's wrong, no question about it, but I think there should be some advantage for the seeded players because those are the ones you normally want to see at the end of the week just by names and everything. It doesn't mean the others are not great tennis players, it has nothing to do with that. But you have that in every sport or even business. The ones who are very good at what they're doing, and if they're famous, they just get a little better treatment than other ones. I think it's just normal.

MICHAEL STICH: No, I think normally they play with the Grand Slam rules. People are allowed to move a little bit, but here at the Open everybody moves any way when they want to, so that doesn't make a change. So it's just the fact that you have to know what is going to happen. Once you know what is going to happen, you can set your mind to that specific problem and just say, okay, I know this is going to happen. People are going to walk around and I have to cope with it because I can't change it. But if you walk on court and somebody tells you a minute before the match, by the way, people are allowed to move around today, it's like you couldn't prepare for that and then you have to adjust sometimes and it's difficult, especially when you're not playing that great. If you play good, there is nothing anyway that disturbed you.

MICHAEL STICH: I didn't play that bad at all the Grand Slams. The last four I didn't play so well, I mean, afterwards. I played good at the Australian, but you can't have a good year every year, and I had a lot of good years in the past. And as I said, I'm very happy I won this round and maybe I wasn't up for the Grand Slams as much as I was for the other tournament, but maybe I was putting too much pressure on myself.

MICHAEL STICH: It happened to me in '92 when I won Wimbledon. I had a great year, finished the year at number four, and lost a little bit of interest. There was nothing really -- there weren't too many goals to go for at that time, and so I didn't play that great. I just won one tournament. I just finished the year 15 which isn't all so bad, but everybody told me it's very bad, you're just number 15 in the world, and you get it into your head and once you do that, once you get so influenced by other people, it's just tough to get out of it. And then in 93, I just said, hey, I'm just a good tennis player. I enjoy it and have fun and don't put any pressure on myself and probably best year in 93, afterwards I had a goal. I wanted to be back in the top five and I reached that goal, and I say this year I want to finish the year in the top five again and just play tennis and I'm just having fun.

MICHAEL STICH: Even more for Jim. Jim has been number one, he won like two of the four Grand Slams, he has been the most dominant player for two and a half years on the tour. So what more is it for a 22 year old at that time to achieve? There's not so much left except the other Grand Slams and he went to the finals of the U.S. Open and he Wimbledon. So he's one of the few players who won all Grand Slams. So just right now -- you got to enjoy life. We're not just machines, if you want to take three weeks off, take three weeks off. Nobody tells us what we have to do. It is not going to hurt the tennis that bad. Nobody is going to lose after taking a couple weeks off.

MICHAEL STICH: You have those guys and they're very, very rare and he's -- what he achieved just has been achieved by Jimmy Connors and other guys before that, but you have to say that tennis right now is much more competitive. You go out there and you saw yesterday what happened, you can't take the number two seed and say he's going to cruise through the first two or three rounds. That's never going to happen. It didn't happen the last two years and it happened. Like ten years ago, you could say, okay first few rounds are pretty easy. You always get an upset, but it is not that bad. But these days you have to be one hundred percent every match, every week, every month, every day. It's very difficult. It's very tiring if you don't take the right breaks at the right time. It can go the wrong way.

MICHAEL STICH: I believe that. I mean, he did -- he won everything he could have won. He's the most successful tennis player ever-- maybe Jimmy. He loves the sport and if he enjoys being out and doesn't get frustrated when he loses, that's something everybody has to accept and understand. He's what, 33 now, I think? I wouldn't be playing tennis at 33, no question about it, but he loves the sport. He doesn't want to give up, he wants to say one day that's it, he's done it 15 years, if he has another two, three years where he enjoys it and makes himself work hard and just competing with the other players, just let him enjoy it.

MICHAEL STICH: Sure. You have to accept that you're not as good as you used to be and I think he knows that and he's been marked a couple times where he lost against guys he never lost to like 3 years 4, 5 years ago, and it's tough for him, but I think it looks like right now as you said he's going out there trying to enjoy himself. He appreciates people still coming out and seeing him play tennis and that's what it's all about at the end. If you walk on center court and people just cheer for him and just enjoy watching him play, that's -- you know, that's a great feeling for a tennis player for every sports person to be out there.

MICHAEL STICH: Sure. It is a thing you have to learn. Like in the beginning when you start to play successful, you win tournaments, everyone tells you you're the greatest, best tennis player, hey, you make a lot of money, all that stuff, and once you just realize tennis and money isn't all in life. You know, there are other things and we play tennis because we love the sport, because it is a sport and for us it became a business because we're playing a professional sport with it, but still we're competing because we love to play tennis. We're not here because some people want us to be here or because we have to be here. All those guys out there, 128 players are here because they love to compete, love to play tennis and they want to win. They want to get the best out of it.

MICHAEL STICH: I was still very disappointed. That's just -- Wimbledon, I made a mistake by just walking off the court. I know I shouldn't have done it, but you make mistakes and learn from it. I won't do it again. You have to accept a defeat and that moment at Wimbledon for me was difficult. But a day later I played doubles and semifinals in doubles and kept on playing and just said to myself, that's the way it happens. You have another week. You play another tournament, you might win the other one next time. It's just something you really have to accept. There are a lot of good players out there and everybody plays really well. You can't expect yourself to -- like Sampras, it's just unbelievable the way he was competing throughout this year, but he's paying the price right now. He has been injured for quite some time. He maybe did too much to his body playing that well, but he did. He played good tennis. But something is going to happen if you play too much and play successfully. You're going to take a break. That's what everybody is the same, I think. You just have to learn.

MICHAEL STICH: I don't know Mats as well -- that well, I couldn't tell. I don't know his character, but he seems to enjoy being around and seeing his old fellows and being part of the tour, but he's probably frustrated that he lost today, but it's not going to take him a week to go over and take like four hours. Tonight, he'll go out for a dinner and go to the bar and he's having fun.

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