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WIMBLEDONJune 20, 2005Dick NormanWIMBLEDON, ENGLAND THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Dick, can you kind of go through the match and how it was for you. You seemed to like in the third and fourth set pick up the momentum. DICK NORMAN: It was close match. It was -- I think these first tiebreakers were important. I thought he was like a bit slow on the court already in the first set, so I thought the longer the match goes, the better my chances will be to win. And we went to a fifth set. I was like pretty confident to win it. And -- but I played a very bad first game - no first serves, double-fault. That changed a lot. Q. You felt that first game basically took you out of it? DICK NORMAN: Yeah, that he was like -- he had -- he could breathe more and could relax a little bit and, I don't know, serve it out. Q. What happened? Lack of concentration? DICK NORMAN: Probably. It was so much tension in the tiebreaker of the fourth set where I had to save three matchpoints. And you know when you have to save a matchpoint against Dent who is serving, it's pretty stressful. Big serve coming, 220 on grass. It's hardly impossible to return it. So much stress, so much intensity to save three matchpoints. Then first game of the fifth set I was like too relaxed, too loose. Q. You've been around a while. How does his serve rate with some of the other big servers out there? DICK NORMAN: I think -- I think -- I don't know, maybe top three. It's so difficult to read his serve. You have no idea where he's serving. Q. So it's not only the speed, it's the placement? DICK NORMAN: Yeah, yeah. You have no idea where he's going. And even if you guess a good corner, ball is coming so hard, the racquet sometimes is just shaking. Q. Does it surprise you he says he hates to serve, he much prefers ground strokes? DICK NORMAN: Yeah, I heard he wasn't serving that great the last couple of weeks, but I think today he served pretty well. Was very few double-faults, and apparently he was serving a lot of -- well, not a lot of, but quite some double-faults in the last couple matches. Q. You served pretty well as well. DICK NORMAN: Yes. Q. You were the only one to break a serve until the fifth set. DICK NORMAN: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I think if we would have played -- but there were like hardly any rallies. But I feel pretty confident from the baseline at the moment. Q. And after that game did you still believe that you could - the first game of the fifth set - did you still believe that you could get anywhere? DICK NORMAN: Sorry? Q. After you lost the first game of the fifth set, did you still believe you could get anywhere or you thought, "This is it"? DICK NORMAN: No, but it was like quite a knock with a big hammer on my head. Like I was also getting tired, but I thought I was on top of him like physically. I felt like in better shape than him, and my serve was going quite well in the third and fourth set so... Q. Yes. DICK NORMAN: In the beginning of the match I didn't have a lot of speed on my serve but like I started to improve then I felt also fitter. So I thought, "Fifth set is mine." If that answers your question, I don't know (smiling)... End of FastScripts…. |
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