THE LIPTON CHAMPIONSHIPS

March 22, 1999

Vincent Spadea

GREG SHARKO: First question for Vincent.

VINCENT SPADEA: Yes.

VINCENT SPADEA: No. There have been similar matches. But this definitely goes down as one of the matches that made me work.

VINCENT SPADEA: It's one week out of the year. Just looking for progress every week. I had a good run here, so it's next time.

VINCENT SPADEA: Yeah, I mean, it seemed at one point it was going to be a one-set match. I mean, that's not what the game is. It's two out of three sets, so you have to keep going. He wasn't exactly standing still the whole time. He likes to run. Obviously, he was going to continue. I felt pretty good. I mean, he just makes you hit a lot of balls. I just had to keep staying aggressive and look for my chances.

VINCENT SPADEA: Yeah, maybe. Well, it's not totally my style of game. I don't want to be doing something consistently that's not something that I do in practice.

VINCENT SPADEA: It did. That's why I started doing it. He was floating a lot of balls. I was trying to cut them off. It worked for a few games. I was still looking to do it, just sometimes my first serve didn't go in. I've decided maybe I could just hit a short ball or something instead. You know, you don't want to deviate too much from what your style of game is, in general. I mean, the idea is to be able to build a winning style no matter who you're playing.

VINCENT SPADEA: That I hit?

VINCENT SPADEA: Well, I might have overdone it at some point. I just needed to get him off the baseline a little bit because he was standing way back just retrieving. Even if I lost the point, I felt like I needed to get him at the net where I didn't think he was best at. He had to run up. He wasn't used to that.

VINCENT SPADEA: I mean, controversy is going to come into play at some point along a tournament, whether it's bad line calls or, you know, whatever. That's just the way it goes. That's part of tennis.

VINCENT SPADEA: I'm playing in Europe on clay. So this was a good match to get ready for that.

VINCENT SPADEA: Yeah, Estoril. I'm playing actually an exhibition tournament in Houston, River Oaks next week.

VINCENT SPADEA: And then Estoril, Barcelona, Monte-Carlo.

VINCENT SPADEA: Right. I'm playing Delray Beach, too. This is the last hard court tournament for a while.

VINCENT SPADEA: Well, there's a week off in between, then Delray.

VINCENT SPADEA: And Rome, the Italian Open. Those are Super 9's. I mean, I'm playing Delray Beach instead of the German Open.

VINCENT SPADEA: No, not necessarily. Usually I have one of my best weeks of my year here, I mean in the past. I mean, I'm developing as a player where I believe I'm going to be able to make good results no matter where I'm playing. I'm looking for a steady ranking improvement, a steady improvement in my game. That's the bottom line. Everyone hopes and works for a Cinderella story where you go out and win a tournament, no matter what it is, like some players, very few players, have done. If that doesn't happen, you just can't go off and, you know, go back -- you have to go back to the practice court and keep working.