TELECOM ITALIA MASTERS

May 6, 2004

Tim Henman

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

TIM HENMAN: No. I certainly played, you know, probably as good a set of tennis I played on clay. You know, second and third sets he, you know, certainly raised his level and started to play, you know, so aggressively and so consistently. And, you know, in those types of conditions, it's, you know, it's very tough to sort of make an impact in his game. He's hitting a lot of first serves and trying to block the ball back. You know, the majority of the time he's then setting up and dictating with his forehand. So, you know, then on my serves, I felt like I hit a lot of, you know, good shots and they, you know, nullified a little bit. It was just very difficult to make an impact out there.

TIM HENMAN: I think I should have hit the approach shot behind him because he's charging to the open court. If I go behind him, there's no way he's changing direction. But, you know, those are the shots -- that's the position you want to be in. So once you're in that position, you back yourself to make it. You know, I missed it. You know, I'd like to think that I'd make it, but on that occasion I didn't. That's just sport for you, I think.

TIM HENMAN: Hmm.

TIM HENMAN: Yeah.

TIM HENMAN: I, you know, I played some really good tennis today. As I said, I think in the conditions, I lost to the better player. It's going to be a tough task, but, you know, I think I knew the right way to play it, but I wasn't able to do it quite well enough because, you know, he played very consistently and aggressively. You know, all credit to him. I don't, you know, don't really have, you know, so many complaints. I was out there trying to use all my game, and in the first set I played to probably as high a level as I could play. I did that for a set, but it wasn't, obviously, long enough to get two sets out of it.

TIM HENMAN: Well, again, I think, you know, like a lot of these events, it is dictated by the weather. You can have great weather in all the places, and, you know, it can be cold and wet as it was today. I think historically, this has been the quickest one - Paris, actually. Paris seems to have got a little bit slower. But if it's cold and wet like this, it doesn't matter where you are - it's going to be pretty slow.

TIM HENMAN: He nearly got me on the next point, unfortunately. But I think, you know, in my opinion, you don't really want to get too analytical right now. I've been playing some good tennis. I've had, you know, another positive week, and, you know, I lost today. I think it's just as simple as that. I feel good about my game, and I'll just be trying to build on it next week in Hamburg. But, you know, I feel very optimistic going into Paris. I think having never been past the third round, I feel, you know, really motivated to improve on that. I think now, with my present clay court game, I should be looking further than that.

TIM HENMAN: No, I mean, it's fine. There's no comparison really with the workload that I had in Monte-Carlo with the singles and the doubles and the nature of my matches. You know, it's been pretty straightforward, just the, you know, two sets on Monday and then two and three the last couple of days. It's been fine.

TIM HENMAN: No. Not in those conditions, no (smiling).

TIM HENMAN: It goes in cycles. You know, with the number of players that are playing the ATP Tour, there's always going to be guys that are getting injured. And sometimes, when a couple of top players get injured at the same time, then that is brought to the forefront of people's attentions. And, you know, I think with the amount that we compete, it's always going to be an issue. But from an individual standpoint, you have to make sure that you take good care of your body because, you know, if you're not 100 percent healthy, you're just not going to be able to compete at this level.

TIM HENMAN: Hmm.

TIM HENMAN: That's a very optimistic and positive...

TIM HENMAN: Yeah, absolutely. Not really, no. I mean, when you're talking about the temperature - I don't know what the temperature is out there - and just the moisture in the court, you get very little out of the conditions, you know. Serves, early on in the week, you feel would be really getting up and you'd get the guy high on his backhand or something. He's standing back and just hitting returns waist-high and swinging away as hard as he can, because you lose that sort of energy out of the ball. So, I mean, it perhaps did pick up marginally, but not quite enough to help me.

TIM HENMAN: Yes.

TIM HENMAN: Hmm, yeah. Every day, yeah.

TIM HENMAN: Yeah.

TIM HENMAN: Yeah, no, I normally sort of speak the night before. So we talk about the match that I've just played and the match that I'm going to play the following day. And, again, I think it's -- something we talked about, for me, I think this balance works really well. I don't want somebody there all the time, and, you know, I think he understands the game and my game so well that he knows what's going on and how the players play. So, you know, I look forward to meeting up with him again in Paris and, obviously, he'll be present for the whole grass court season.