THE LIPTON CHAMPIONSHIPS

March 23, 1999

Richard Krajicek

GREG SHARKO: Richard advances to his first Lipton semifinal. And dating back to last August, he has now defeated the last six Top 10 opponents he's faced. He's also only the third player to beat Sampras four consecutive times or more. First question for Richard.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: They feel pretty good, thank you. Surgery was a success end of last year. After the eight weeks of rehab, I did a lot of strengthening. At the moment, I feel I can move very good. I have good balance when I come to the net. Yeah, I think it really helped my game, especially my serve and volley game.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Well, I know it's always going to be tough. But, yeah. Somehow I think it's more the other way around: I think he doesn't like to see my name in the next round.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Yeah, that's a question I ask myself also. I hope I can answer it over the next two years. I feel at the moment physically very strong. I think my tennis has improved over the last couple of years. In a way, I think that's what it comes down to for me, if I can -- I don't want to rush myself saying this year, but I think at the end of next year, it's maybe a nice thing to look at. Like you said, do I have the mind or heart to do it? I'm working very hard. I'm trying to do everything possible to achieve it. But at the moment, I'm just trying to go back to Top 5, better my No. 5 ranking, which has been my best ranking so far, just work my way up from there easy. I hope this year is going to continue the way it started so far.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: I just remember the last, what happened in the end, that he didn't put away the volley. I knew I could get to it. I saw him close in. I thought the best play was to lob him. As soon as I saw, I lobbed him. Well, I was on top of the net. It's really tough to pass me. When a guy has to run back to the baseline and create something, I think it puts a lot of pressure on him. At that moment when I saw the lob, I really felt in control. But he came back strong. I think after he broke me, he really raised his game a couple of levels. It suddenly became a very nice and close match.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Well, second half of the year, would have been I think difficult. First half of the year, I felt pretty good.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Well, I think somehow I seem to pick his serve pretty good. I'm tall, so I make him play a lot of balls. He's struggling to get my serve back. A lot of times I win relatively easy service games. That puts extra pressure on his game, that he has to keep on winning his game. He likes to stay back sometimes, but against me I notice that he's playing serve and volley because he knows I will attack him if he doesn't come to the net. I think I make him play maybe a little bit different. He likes to construct the point a little bit more. Against me, he has to maybe rush a little bit more than he would like to.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Yeah, it's okay, as long as I can live up to it. The last time I beat Pete in a quarterfinal was in Wimbledon. Then suddenly I was the favorite also. This is not maybe as big an event, but I think it's very important for me. I would like to, of course, win the next two matches. But I don't think I should get too excited. The reason why these other guys are in the quarters and the winners are in the semis, of course, they're playing good tennis. Golmard beat Henman, and Kucera are playing pretty good at the moment. Thomas relatively easily beat Corretja the other day. Yeah, they're both in form. I feel good, I feel strong. I got a day off tomorrow, so we'll spend some time with the family. I think I'll go with a clear mind and not try to put pressure on myself. I'll just believe in my own abilities, and not try to think like, "I'm the highest ranked player, I win this event."

RICHARD KRAJICEK: I hope so. Next Friday. That's the plan.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: France.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: On clay (making fist).

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Then you feel a lot of pressure. You know if you lose one of those two points, the tiebreaker is basically over. Yeah, I really concentrated hard. Those were four big points from me, from 4-1 to 4-3, and from 5-4 to 6-5. If I would lose either of those four service points, yeah, it would have been very difficult for me to come back. I think I hit a couple of good serves, but also came up with a couple of good volleys. That's what I was very happy about today. I think the first set and a half, Pete made some mistakes, then he stepped up his game, and we had a very close match. Then when it mattered, I came up with some very good shots.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: I don't really remember the points so well anymore. I remember the 5-All points. I remember the first match point. Actually, I remember from 5-All the last four points of the match. I don't remember any more what happened at 4-1 really.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Well, it's going to be interesting. For starters, I have to get there. Normally I was going to fly back to Amsterdam. It's very difficult to fly into Nimes because they don't have an international airport. You have to fly, I don't know, through Paris, I guess. Then we play on clay, which is also a little bit of a change. We play against a French team, yeah, who picked their own surface, who are going to have 7,000 countrymen behind them. They have performed better than us in Davis Cup. It's going to be an interesting tie. But I think we're looking forward to it. At least I'm looking forward to it. I think at least I've matured in Davis Cup. I think I felt last time I played, it's been a while ago, but I finally felt that I'm playing better. I don't feel so much pressure. Before, I always had the urge to prove myself a lot in Davis Cup. I don't have that urge anymore. I think Haarhuis and Siemerink have played some good matches the last couple of years. It's going to be a difficult tie, but I think we're up to the task. I think we can do it if we stick together as a team very well, which we've been doing for the last couple of years, yeah, try to play tough, put pressure on the French. In a way, playing at home can also bring pressure. I hope we can win. It would be a really good feeling. This team has already lost one of its members, Jacco Eltingh. I don't know how long Paul is going to play. It would be nice with these people that we can go further than a quarterfinals, which we've reached three or four times.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Yeah. It's a good feeling. I didn't know how I was going to do against him when he's ranked No. 2 . I managed beat him also when he was ranked No. 2. It is a nice feeling. It's a nice feeling to beat him in the States. The crowd was cheering for him, of course. It's always nice to beat somebody in their own country. I beat Boris once in Germany. The crowd is even more into it. But, yeah, those are nice victories. Pete is not playing maybe his best tennis, but still you feel the pressure in the end to beat him. The first match point, in a way, I thought I had it. I had a great return. He comes up with this great half volley. Suddenly you're back to 6-All instead of taking a shower. You feel the pressure, so it is always a nice feeling to beat him.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Cuts a couple of hours from your sleep. That's probably the biggest change.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: At the moment we have help here, or else it's not possible at a tournament, when I'm playing a tournament. After I beat Schalken first round, I had a day off. She slept with us. She still was a little bit jet-lagged. Then I got up actually at about 2:30 in the morning, warmed the bottle, put it, give it, lights out, then hope she goes to sleep. It's nice.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: It's difficult to say what's the right decision. Maybe I would have stayed fit for The Championships, and I would have had a nice Championships because I'm a pretty good indoor player, I think. I was just afraid if it would go wrong in the ATP Championships with my knee, then I would have ruined that tournament for me and I would not have been able to get fit in time for the Australian Open. I was, yeah, just cutting my losses. I didn't want to take the chance of losing both tournaments. I just played it safe in a way. I said, "Okay, have the operation now." It hurts to let the ATP Championships go. It's not like I'm qualifying every year that it's like boring. It's the third time I could have played it, so it would have been nice. I'm happy I made that choice and that I played the Australian Open, even though maybe I wasn't physically, I'd say, endurance-wise that I was in the best of shape. But, yeah, it was a good experience for me. I knew it was going to help me for the rest of the year. So far it actually pretty quickly helped me for the best of the year.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: I haven't followed too much. I heard he had got a technical for sticking his tongue out yesterday. I think people are maybe paying too much attention to him. I think it's important if you have such a great rebounder. Has he done something wrong that I haven't heard of?

RICHARD KRAJICEK: That's okay, as long as he does also his job on the court, I think he's an important asset. The Bulls have really had a lot of joy from him in that sense. He does some strange things sometimes, but I think without him the Bulls would have had a tougher time winning those three championships.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: I don't know. I haven't played it too many times. I just talked to Michiel Schapers yesterday, our national coach, they're playing now in the satellites. There is a Dutch guy playing there, he likes it. He says it adds a little bit more importance to every point. Normally you have the cushion of the two points from the deuce. But suddenly also the 40-30 point is important because if you lose that, you're back to deuce, suddenly the guy has game point also. It adds some excitement, at least for the players. I don't know for the fans. I guess they'll feel the tension more. I'm not a big admirer - I don't know how you say it - of rule changes. Sometimes rule changes, you have to watch out because the game of tennis has become the game of tennis because of what it is. I think if it's well thought out, if they experiment enough with it and the players give good feedback, maybe it is a possibility, if the sport really needs it. Yeah, I think like a game at 2-1, we had that long deuce game where Pete broke me in the end, I think that's pretty exciting also. He has a couple of breakpoints, he doesn't make it, suddenly he makes it, that adds also excitement to the game. It's difficult to say. I think you can say positive and negative things for both rules.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Well, the problem with my knee, I had a lesion or tear in the meniscus. The pain, basically I had tendonitis. The meniscus somehow put extra pressure on the tendon. By cutting a piece of the meniscus out, it took the pressure off the tendon. So the problem was the meniscus, but the pain was in the tendon of the kneecap, the patellar tendon, it's called.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Yes.

RICHARD KRAJICEK: Her birthday is on Friday. I think she'll have a decent birthday present on Friday already. She doesn't know what's going on, but the parents are happy. The first birthday is only for the parents, nothing to do with the child.