GREAT AMERICAN INSURANCE ATP CHAMPIONSHIP

August 9, 1999

Wayne Arthurs

Q. Can you tell us how you felt today?

WAYNE ARTHURS: I started out serving quite well and serving not such a high percentage of the first serve, but serving pretty good direction. And then at 6-5 in the third set, I just put in a shocker with three double faults. And at this level, you're not going to win too many games if you do that.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I can't really pinpoint anything. Just maybe bad concentration.

WAYNE ARTHURS: When I'm confident, I think I can hit the ball maybe even the second set the same as the first set. But some days, it doesn't happen.

WAYNE ARTHURS: They are coming very light.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Mid-life crisis up on me (Laughs).

WAYNE ARTHURS: I've developed very late in my singles, that's for sure. I'm just enjoying it now. At the age of 28, not many people get the opportunity to get in the top hundred all of the sudden. And that's happened to me. I'm just enjoying it at this stage.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Nothing has come close so far.

WAYNE ARTHURS: It's completely different atmosphere. I walked out on Court 1 against Agassi, and the crowd was unbelievable. And as soon as you start to play the first point, you couldn't hear a pint drop. Not like this; everybody is moving around or anything. At Wimbledon, the atmosphere is unbelievable.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Certainly, you go out in every match, and you think that all you have to do is break once; and I didn't break too often. But I wasn't losing my serve, and to go into every match thinking I'm going to hold here every game and go down. If I could do that every week, I wouldn't be 94 in the world.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Possibly. He's got the best serve in the world, I think, personally. Just completely different to everybody else's serve, though.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Not the hardest. But just the pace the ball comes through is different to everybody else.

WAYNE ARTHURS: My doubles.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Not as much. But there's a lot of doubles players out there who are just playing doubles only, and they are making a decent living.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I had a period of about 10 months when I was injured, and I thought about -- not giving up, but things are going through your mind when you're injured and you're out of the tennis scene for so long. That inspired me to play singles after that.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Middle of '97.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Elbow. I tore the ligaments off the inside of the elbow.

WAYNE ARTHURS: That was the thinking, yeah. That was my last chance to go and play singles. And if I didn't do it now, then I would have a career-high ranking of 300.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I didn't want that, no.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I've been working with my father for a long time, since about the age of nine. My father and I would go out on the local courts and practice an hour a day. And pretty much, I practiced until I was 16 or 17. Not the only thing, but the major thing that I practiced. And got into just a very good technique early in my -- early in my years. And it's paid off. Very long way down the track, but it has.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah. He played Davis Cup with in '65, or in the 60s for Ireland, and he said the serve was a major aspect of his game.

WAYNE ARTHURS: It's technique. Everything is technique. You see the best sportsman in every game, and the technique is the major thing that gets them through.

WAYNE ARTHURS: There's no real secret. I think it was down to a lot of practice and being relaxed before you're about to hit the serve. You can't be tensing up before you hit the serve or it's not going to happen.

WAYNE ARTHURS: About 75.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Maybe if I did it differently, it would have changed things. Tennis has a lot to do with how you've grown up. If you come up hitting ground strokes the whole day, every day, that's the way you're going to develop, and it's shown in my game that I did the serving.

WAYNE ARTHURS: We had a lot of fun. A lot of fun. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be here. There's low moments and high moments, and you've got to even those out, and the high moments always outweigh the low moments.

WAYNE ARTHURS: I've got a long stretch, a long period of time without any points until pretty much Wimbledon next year; so, I'm not putting a goal on it at this stage.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Start sprinkling grass on my -- (laughter.)

WAYNE ARTHURS: I think I've known that I've always had it there. My game has been there. I've never really thought that I could be there, which is a different thing. I've always had a little bit -- the feeling inside -- what do you call it --

WAYNE ARTHURS: My confidence has never been there to really think that I could do it. And now that this period has come through Wimbledon --

WAYNE ARTHURS: I was winning doubles tournaments.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Really not sure. Maybe that's what kept me going.

WAYNE ARTHURS: He was a mechanical engineer. He's retired now.

WAYNE ARTHURS: No. (Laughs.)

WAYNE ARTHURS: I think there's probably a little bit of locker room talk about what I've done and through that you get respect. And then you go out on the court and the guys think: Who is this guy sitting there on the other side of the court. But now the coaches are out there, scanning what you do, and that sort of is a mark of respect.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Very positive. (Laughs.)

WAYNE ARTHURS: I didn't play that much. I wasn't there.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Yeah. I didn't play. I pulled out of that tournament. I didn't play that tournament.

WAYNE ARTHURS: That would be a good goal, yes. I think I have -- if I pull out the other half of my game, the returning, I think I can possibly get into the Top 50.

WAYNE ARTHURS: Before I got injured, yeah. I was pretty much only playing doubles. And then I got -- then I got injured, and my whole attitude changed. Everything was needed to be played by me; so, for my own mind's sake.

End of FastScripts….