US OPEN

August 31, 2001

Todd Martin

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

TODD MARTIN: Well, a lot of today came down to conditioning. It fortunately came down to the type of conditioning that has not been plaguing me of late. So I felt pretty healthy muscularly and joint-wise. But my opponent seemed to wear me out a bit, which is not pleasing, but it's I would say the lesser of two evils.

TODD MARTIN: Oh, yeah. No, it's -- to me, that's a foregone conclusion.

TODD MARTIN: Enlighten me.

TODD MARTIN: Is that exactly what happened?

TODD MARTIN: Well, if that's the case, you got two choices: One, take Lleyton for his word or, two, be disappointed that that type of comment and attitude is present in our game. For me, I'd like to be able to sit down and look at it myself and decide for myself. But, you know, if that indeed happened, that's pretty disappointing.

TODD MARTIN: Well, a couple times I -- couple of times I didn't attack the ball with my feet as much as I needed to. And when that happens, I typically miss the ball in the net because I'm not as close to the net as I need to be or as I assume I'm going to be to hit the ball. And then a couple times I had trouble picking up the ball out of the crowd.

TODD MARTIN: Well, today I didn't see too much that was bad. He's extremely gifted as far as the way he hits the ball. He moves great. I was impressed with the way he served today. I don't think I was too intelligent with my approach to returning, but he certainly exploited some weaknesses in my return game. And I think he competes pretty well. I think there were a couple times today where he could have let the situation and let me get the best of him, and he did a good job of not letting that happen.

TODD MARTIN: You know, I'd be pretty ignorant if I thought that just because I've done well here the last couple of years that I'm going to continue to do well. I understood that I had to come here to do some work. And, frankly, I was pleased in some regards about the way I played but disappointed that I missed out on an opportunity to progress through the draw. And I felt like today was simple - I played a guy who was better than I was today. You know, I need to go back to work and see if I can't get to the point where I can be a little bit more confident going out on the court that I'm going to be better than the other guy.

TODD MARTIN: Well, I need to take a few days off just to try to get myself a bit of a mental rest and physical rest and continue to try to rehab my knees. I think they're moving in the right direction, which is very encouraging, but I need to devote some time on the court because in the last few weeks it's been, you know, an hour practice here and an hour practice there. And that's, you know, today a lot of it was to do with tennis. And, yes, he competed well; yes, he played well. But there were times in the match where I did not hit the tennis ball the way that I feel like I can expect to do on a daily basis. So I need to get back out on the court and work on those things. And next time I play, it will pay off, I'm pretty confident.

TODD MARTIN: I haven't spoken to Patrick at all. I believe there are some other candidates that Patrick has that would be intelligent choices. If he feels like I'm the one, then I'll play. But I would, if and when we have that discussion, I'll be definitely a devil's advocate because I think there are some choices that he could make that would be more congruent with his idea of making the team younger and younger. And at this point in time, one, I'm not playing great, and, two, my health has been pretty sporadic. So it's important for me to make sure he understands my thoughts. And if he still feels like I'm the guy, then I'll be there with bells on.

TODD MARTIN: Well, he does play -- one thing that I was pretty impressed with was that he was able to play both well behind the baseline which is typically Spanish, but also near the baseline. I took some pretty good swings at a few shots and he got in pretty good position to hit the ball despite not having the time to back up, which made it very difficult for me. The ball was back before I was ready for it a lot - an awful lot. He's still Spanish. I mean, you know, there's no doubt about it. But you look at every single one of the Spanish players today compared to five years ago, guys that were on the tour then and new guys, and they're all much more capable offensive tennis players. I mean, if I would have won, I would have had to play somebody else from Spain who stands -- is willing to stand in and put a lot of pressure on you. And I wasn't thinking that that was going to be too much fun either.