US OPEN

September 6, 1998

Martina Hingis

Q. Feel lucky to have escaped?

MARTINA HINGIS: Well, I haven't escaped. I'm just kind of escaping every day, kind of. No, but I started off very well this tournament. I was motivated when I came here to do well again. Kind of instead of getting better, I'm getting worse is what I have the feeling right now. It's not very easy. When I play like Mauresmo or Dechy, they both are from France, but they're not like top players. You have to go play against them. It's like you think it's going to be easy, but all of a sudden you're out there on the court, everything is fine, but you just kind of can't hit the ball in the court. So that's a problem. It was kind of very windy. I had so much trouble, I just couldn't hit one serve in. Probably like 20 double-faults. Can somebody tell me how many I made?

MARTINA HINGIS: Nine?

MARTINA HINGIS: Only nine? Wow! (laughter). I was like four in one game or so.

MARTINA HINGIS: I expected playing like Sugiyama maybe in the fourth round, someone who's tougher. You go out there, think everything is fine. You're very confident, but it's windy, you just kind of looking for everything. Just kind of can't find out the reason. It's complicated, all this. I don't know.

MARTINA HINGIS: Well, I was like ready when she was up -- the first set was 6-1, 4-1 up. I was like, you know, I had my skirt on, my head band, everything was set. Then all of a sudden it was like 6-4 Po. You still saw that she has to go through three sets. You just kind of wait there, hang around. I guess she didn't have the best day either today.

MARTINA HINGIS: I had trouble, too. Just my serves, return, the ball comes right at you, all of a sudden it's like two meters next to you. You kind of want to hit the ball already, and it's going away and away. You feel like, Hey, what's the matter? You just kind of have to be very focused and concentrate on each point. Sometimes it just comes directly to you. You think it's going to be an easy shot. Boom, you hit it in the net or something goes wrong.

MARTINA HINGIS: Oh, the wind was terrible today. It was spinning around. You always thought, you know, from this side you're going to have the better side. The sun is not against you. You have wind in your back. You're going to make the shots. You just kind of control the game. All of a sudden, everything turns around against you. It wasn't very easy. I'm in the quarters again, top eight.

MARTINA HINGIS: Well, I just kind of try to find out a solution about all this. You know, I was there, I tried to be aggressive, control the game. She played -- she kind of used my power sometimes. She was, like, the better angles I would play, the better she moves and hit it better back. I just kind of tried to hit the ball in and stay in the game.

MARTINA HINGIS: I guess everybody talks to herself.

MARTINA HINGIS: Like Swiss German, and also in pictures. You kind of have the pictures of what you could do, how you could do it better. Then suddenly it doesn't happen again and again.

MARTINA HINGIS: Oh, yes.

MARTINA HINGIS: If I'm going to continue playing like this, it's not going to go anywhere. I definitely have to raise my level. I know that I lost against her the last two times we've played. I played a pretty good match against her in Montreal. I just kind of couldn't go through the whole match. She was just very tough. She hit some great shots. You know, she won the whole tournament later on. I hope this is going to be a different story.

MARTINA HINGIS: Well, I don't think so. Like today, I don't think it was one of her best matches. She always kind of is saying that her back's bothering her or something. She also lost like against Lindsay the last two times in California. So I don't think she's on her best, but me neither. So we'll see.

MARTINA HINGIS: It just has to be faster. She's got like unbelievable angles, she has a very fast game. She's always attacking you. So you just have to be faster than her, trying to move her around, just be faster, be quicker.

MARTINA HINGIS: Personalities?

MARTINA HINGIS: Well, we know each other pretty well because we travel like so much together at the tournaments. So you kind of know a little bit how this person is. But, I mean, nobody knows me a hundred percent. You always have some secrets about yourself.

MARTINA HINGIS: The American overall they're very confident, whatever they do, very self-confident. If you ask someone, "Can do you this and that?" "Yeah, sure, I can do it." That's what you don't really do in Europe. You say, "I'm okay." Someone asked me, "How do you ski?" "I can go down a hill." It's like, because in Switzerland, it's a very high level of skiing. That's probably a little bit different about being European or American.

MARTINA HINGIS: (Indicating with a waving hand.) I don't know, like 6, 7, maybe like that.

MARTINA HINGIS: No. It's going to have to be 9 or 10 against her.

MARTINA HINGIS: I felt pretty good when I went on the court. When I had to start to move, I was kind of stiff, especially like in the match against Amelie Mauresmo the other day. When I had to change directions or something, I saw it. But my legs were going like somewhere else in my mind. It was strange, because I didn't really have these problems like last year or something, that my body has changed. I'm in a different position, definitely. I've been working on it. It's better lately, but not like in the last two matches. In the beginning, it was better. Now it's going down. Hopefully, it can't be worse.