WIMBLEDON

June 28, 2004

Sjeng Schalken

THE MODERATOR: Questions in English.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Well, I hope so. But many times I meet the man who wins it, and just a couple players who just have this little extra. And if I meet them, then it's very tough. Yeah, one of them is, again, winning again, Roddick. He just killed me the last three times. But the matches I can win, where I have a chance, yeah, they're mostly taken. That's why I get all the way through the last 16s, the last of eight. But a couple guys I have troubles playing against, the really big-serving guys with also very good groundstrokes, because then it's a little uneven match. My serve is not that good. He can return my serve, and I have troubles returning that serve. That's why I lost to Federer a couple times, yeah.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Well... I'm happy I don't meet him this year then.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Yeah, it was in the third set. I was up 4-1. But he broke me twice.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Just trying to go for the winners. So actually it was a little lucky.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Federer?

SJENG SCHALKEN: I think Federer and Roddick are tough to break. They don't give a lot away. They hit high percentage first serve. They can handle the pressure I give them, so they have also very good defense. Once I'm in the rally with them, it's not like, "Now I'm going to win." No, I still have to play really well to beat them.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Well, the thing I had with Federer was the most trouble with his good defense. I couldn't make the winner. And the thing with Andy last three times, I had the feeling I was serving the whole match because he was just hitting four serves, winning, and then I was struggling to get my game in. They are just slightly different. Andy is a little bit more power. Roger has a great defense.

SJENG SCHALKEN: Well, I hope he's thinking about that a little bit, and taking it easy on me. He didn't do that the last three times. No, we go out, go for it. Before and after we'll be good friends, and on the court we'll try to win.

SJENG SCHALKEN: First of all, we met each other on the roof. There we were helping actually both also the elderly people. Yeah, we had already the panic behind us because we were trapped in our room. We had to jump from balcony to balcony to get actually on the roof of Andy's apartment, because we were on the seventh floor and Andy was staying on the sixth floor. So when we were finally on the roof of the sixth floor, there we met Andy. Andy helped us jumping down to his balcony where we could see the firemen.

SJENG SCHALKEN: I think we both kept cool. You have those moments in sport and you have those moments in life. You see that Andy and me were a little bit cooler because you have those situations also in the sport.