WESTERN AND SOUTHERN FINANCIAL GROUP MASTERS

August 13, 2003

Gaston Gaudio

MODERATOR: Questions for Gaston.

GASTON GAUDIO: Well, I like to play over here. I really enjoy this tournament. We have everything. We have the golf there, I love to play golf. So I feel okay in here.

GASTON GAUDIO: No, we used to make always tough matches when we play each other. The last three, I guess, he won, but I was pretty close when I lost in Monte-Carlo and I lost in Roma. Like I told you, we used to play like always tough matches, and it's so close, it could be for one or for the other.

GASTON GAUDIO: I don't know why. Maybe because we know each other since like we were young. So every time that we play against, you know, it's like we know each other so much. So there's always tough matches.

GASTON GAUDIO: I was a little bit lucky when he was serving in the third set 5-4, that he made an easy mistake in the first point of the game. Then I make a good return, and I was like Love-40 in two seconds. So I was lucky that game. It was so close that, I mean, was that, you know, the last game was everything.

GASTON GAUDIO: Well, actually, I really don't know what happened. We're playing very good everyone. I think that maybe because one is getting to the final in a big tournament like that. Last week, the other one is thinking, "If he's doing that, maybe I can do it either." So it's like a kind of a -- one player motivates the other one, you know? It's like kind of that I guess.

GASTON GAUDIO: Yeah, there was -- yeah, Mancini. But after that ones, there didn't come anyone. But now there are like, I don't know, 10 players that are playing unbelievable. Is always happen the same. It's like between one and the other was like 10 years, you know. After Mancini, Jaite, and all that ones, no one comes. Now there's getting someone new, I don't know why.

GASTON GAUDIO: I really don't know. Because from the tennis federation in Argentina, we don't get anything so it's not because of them.

GASTON GAUDIO: 24.

GASTON GAUDIO: No.

GASTON GAUDIO: No, he used to come over, practice in Buenos Aires. Yeah, he used to say - I don't know - he'd teach us some things, some kind of experience that he had, but not much.

GASTON GAUDIO: Vilas. Clerc I think is living here in Miami.

GASTON GAUDIO: Yeah, I think that soccer is gonna be always the first sport in our country, and then maybe tennis is coming up.

GASTON GAUDIO: Yeah. As popular, no.

GASTON GAUDIO: Yeah, of course. Everybody is playing so good that the people there in Argentina are getting, you know, like still following us, of course. Coria is gonna get into the Masters maybe. People, they're really behind that.

GASTON GAUDIO: No, not like that. We can still going out and all that.

GASTON GAUDIO: I really don't know him so much because we never play against each other. But I know he's playing unbelievable good here in this surface, and it's gonna be tough for sure.

GASTON GAUDIO: I would love to win like first a Masters Series - of course on clay because here it's gonna be difficult for me, but I will try to. And then my dream is like winning the French Open.