US OPEN

August 30, 2005

Wayne Arthurs

WAYNE ARTHURS: Terrible.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Uh-huh. One of the worst matches I played for a long, long time I think.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, I think so. Just nothing felt right. Felt even a little uncoordinated with my movement. I don't know what that was. I don't know. Very strange match.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Felt all right. Yeah, no problem. I had a little bit of a slight back problem on the right lower side which has affected my movement to the backhand side a little bit. I'm not blaming that on that. Maybe just got to reassess a little bit, get a little bit more motivation back. I sort of lost a little bit after Wimbledon, sort of Davis Cup time. It was a big period I think for me, especially, I'm sure for Lleyton as well. What I set my year around was playing well at Wimbledon, then having a good Davis Cup year. Sort of both fell away there. I lost a little bit of motivation coming into the hard court season. Been in a bit of a rut since.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, I think it is a little bit kind of to get up each week is more difficult than it was one, two years ago. I may have to maybe shorten my year this year and try and get the motivation level back for the Aussie summer. At this stage, it was a difficult match to be a part of.

WAYNE ARTHURS: It has a little bearing on it. I mean, I'll know when I don't want to be out there any more. I feel I have some good tennis left in me. Obviously, I have days like this that you don't want to go out there any more. I think I need that extended period at the end of this year to find my game again and find that real motivation that's going to keep me going into 2006.

WAYNE ARTHURS: This sort of match, yeah (laughter). It makes you want to hang 'em up. No, I've got some thinking to do over the next four or five months. I'll see what happens.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, I think that's a little bit of a problem that happened here. Not here, but leading up to this tournament. I set myself pretty well to play well at Wimbledon and didn't get over the line there. Then the Davis Cup was a bit of a downer for me. After losing that, I found it very difficult to get up and go back to LA, the LA tournament, which was a week and a half after that. Yeah, you've still got to set goals. If you're not setting goals, you might as well hang 'em up. You've got to be wanting to go out there each week and try your hardest, find that again.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I might shorten the European indoor part of that of the season, I think three tournaments in Asia. It depends a little bit on how well we do here in the doubles. I think we're 8th on the race in the doubles. If we have a pretty good US Open here, we're going to stay at least 8th or move higher. If we're still in the mix by the end of the Asian swing, then obviously Paul and I, that's a goal for us, to get to the Masters.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I think so, a little bit, yeah.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Not necessarily.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Tennis as a whole, yeah.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, I think I've still got a role to play in Junior tennis maybe in the future.

WAYNE ARTHURS: In Australia, yeah. I think I would like to get away from it just for a little bit after I retire to not sort of let it just carry on and sort of be a grudge, I mean, just a pain in the ass sort of thing so to speak (laughter). I'd want to go away and I think clear my head from tennis for probably at least a year after I retire, whenever that is.

WAYNE ARTHURS: We can't all be a Scotty Draper, can we - unfortunately.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah. I've moved out of London. I'm back in Australia now already. Australia will be my base.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, maybe, uh-huh. You want a date, don't you (laughter)?

WAYNE ARTHURS: I'm not going to tell you guys.

WAYNE ARTHURS: There's always going to be someone coming up. There's always going to be somebody. There is somebody on the horizon somewhere around the corner.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I can't pronounce them (laughter). Pete Luczak showed he played pretty well here. I don't know how his match went yesterday. I think the first set he played pretty well. There's got to be somebody out there. It will happen.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, a little bit.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, I think it is. I think we've got a few good people out there who are trying to make the right moves. Obviously there's a little bit of refining to do with Steve Wood and Craig Tiley now in those positions. I think they'll do a bit of sorting out.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Don't know what he's talking about (laughter). Why would he feel like that?

WAYNE ARTHURS: Definitely, yeah. I mean, it would be great -- five years ago we had 10, 11 guys in the top hundred. Now we've got two. One of them's nearly 40 years old (laughter). Yeah, I'm sure it's very difficult to have that pressure every time he goes into a major or Davis Cup to you guys expecting him to win, I expect him to win. It is a lot of pressure on him. Probably Tim Henman is finding that out now that he's gone through a little bit of a flat patch at the moment. It probably does weigh down on him after a while.

WAYNE ARTHURS: No.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah, I think my ranking would probably determine a little bit to when I do pack it in, not in main draws of week-in, week-out tournaments. Time to move on, start being a journalist (smiling).