WIMBLEDON

June 22, 2004

Wayne Ferreira

THE MODERATOR: Wayne Ferreira for you.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I think I will, yeah. I mean, I do obviously have regrets that I didn't win or get to a final. I felt there were some years that I had a really good chance, and deserved to, and didn't. You know, but there have been good ones. I've had a great time. I really can't complain. I've loved what I've been doing. It been a lot of fun. It's sad that it has to come to an end sometime. I wish I could keep going.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Gee, my first Grand Slam ever to play Yannick Noah, Court 2, couldn't have been any better, couldn't have been a better start to a great career than that.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Well, I think the Noah one was a good one. I remember my quarterfinals in Australia against McEnroe. I remember two matches I had here against Courier and Todd Martin in the quarters that I lost that were tough matches that I felt I could have won.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Well, I mean, outside of Grand Slams, there's been plenty. I mean, the Olympics, you know, was fantastic. It's the first time anyone had won a medal for our country I think in 32, 36 years. You know, I got a lot of credit back home. People started, you know, to really get into the Olympic thing again, which was great. I've had some -- you know, beating Lleyton Hewitt in the finals of Stuttgart the one year when things weren't going that well for me and I was thinking about packing it in back then. So, you know, there's been some good times, they're been some bad ones. But I have a lot of great memories. It's hard to say what one is the best one when a lot of them had different meanings.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Well, probably it would have to be one of my best - maybe the best, you know, it's not something that I started out at the beginning of my career and said, "Well, this is what I'm going to end off doing." It came a couple of years ago. And then I felt like, "Wow, actually it's not a bad thing." The last maybe two or three Grand Slams, a lot of the players have been, you know, congratulating me and saying that they think it's a great thing. A lot of them have thought about how long it would take them to get to this, and they laugh a lot. You know, some of them look for like 10 years more. So it's created a little bit of a laugh. You know, a lot of them have a little respect for me in a sense they know how difficult it is to stay healthy for this amount of time.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Last year here probably was the closest I've come. It was the only year that if I wasn't probably going for this, I would not have played. Even though I did lose in the first round, I didn't lose because of the injury. I actually recovered pretty well from it. I just didn't -- wasn't able to hit a ball until I played my match, so I was a little out of practice and had a tough first round. But that one, I think if there wasn't anything on it, I probably would have given myself a little bit more time to recover.

WAYNE FERREIRA: No, I really can't, not at this stage.

WAYNE FERREIRA: No, no. There's a lot of work that needs to be done - a lot. It's going to take some time.

WAYNE FERREIRA: It's been a struggle. I mean, it's like anything, you know, it's not always easy. When you don't do well, it's difficult. When you start to have other things going in your life, you know, family who need you at home a lot, it makes it tougher. The motivation, it's always difficult. You know, I've been playing for so long, it's so hard to be motivated day in and day out. I think the mistake I made when I was younger, I played too much, too many tournaments, I didn't really focus enough on the big ones and try to make my schedules better. So I got to some stages where I was so burnt out of playing that it was pretty difficult to get motivated. And then later on in my career when I got married and had kids, I had a kid, you know, that was a little bit of pressure, wanting to be home and stay at home. So that was tough to get motivated for that. So there's been various things. Look, it hasn't been easy by any means. There's been a lot of times -- there's probably been three times in my career that I've really, really wanted to retire, and just felt, "Well, you know, let's give it maybe three or four months and try really hard in those months and see what happens." Every time those three or four months, I've started playing really well and started enjoying it again, so it kept me going.

WAYNE FERREIRA: It's second. My family's first, and tennis is second. But, you know, it's good, though, because for the last, you know, 14 years, tennis -- well, actually since I started playing tennis or took it seriously at 12, it's always been first. And nothing's come close.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Yeah, I hide away pretty well.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I like it, yeah. I think it's nice for me. I get a good kick out of playing with the college guys. They give me a lot of respect. They enjoy me being around. The people around Berkeley, around the University that are part of the tennis know who I am, but other than that, nobody else. No, I don't mind it. I think it's nice.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I think it does depend on which country you come from. I mean, for us it was such a huge thing to be back in the Olympics that, you know, it was right there, and then it was important. But then, you know, you take a guy like Yevgeny Kafelnikov who throughout his whole career always said about how he would never play for nothing, and money was the most important thing in his life. If you ask him now one of his greatest moments, I think he might even put the Olympics ahead of winning a Grand Slam. You know, once you're there and once you partake in it and you're a part of it, you realize the importance of it and how big of an achievement it is to get a medal.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I think a lot of it comes to funding, to finances. I mean, you know, South Africa is a pretty wealthy country. We struggle financially. The tennis union doesn't have any money to send the kids like I did when I was a kid. I was lucky. I got sent on squads, had proper training and coaches. Then about a couple years after I got out of the Juniors, it all went away. And they just haven't had the opportunities like I have. I think the money is a huge importance. We don't really have it in South Africa. I think a lot of Africa has the same problem.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Nobody really. My brother played a little bit. He was four years older than me. He played a bit. He went to college and played college tennis. I just enjoyed it. I was good at it from a fairly young age and I liked to play it. I enjoyed doing individual things. I didn't like the soccer and the cricket because I had, you know -- if I played well and we lost, you know, I always felt like I deserved to win. So that's why I took tennis because it was all about me, and I enjoyed that, being in control of my own.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I've enjoyed the grass. I've been a little bit disappointed over the years how it's changed and become more slower, more like a hard court. I wish it was quicker, as it was in the early '90s. But I still have a lot of fun coming here. It's a wonderful experience. You know, it's great to have been able to have been here in so many years. Growing up in South Africa, this is the tournament you wanted to play in. I have a lot of great memories. I'm really going to miss coming here.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I haven't at the moment, no.

WAYNE FERREIRA: It's the only one I've entered in, yeah.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I think the main thing is the balls are a lot slower. The guys that have very big serves are still able to serve big and get away with it. But the guys who have sort of middle serves like me that aren't that hard or placing have struggled a little bit. Not so much on the first serve, but the second serve. I remember I came here in '90, from '90 and '95, I served and volleyed every first and second serve. If you didn't, you lost, basically. Since then it's been a struggle to serve and volley on second serves. It's changed a lot. For me it's been disappointing because I would have won a lot more matches if it had stayed that way. A lot of other people have enjoyed it more. It's given more of the clay-courters and the baseliners more of an opportunity to do well, but it's taken away a bit of the serve and volley, which is sad, because that's what grass is for, it's supposed to be to serve and volley.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I'm not sure if they changed the court much. I think they changed the grass sometime or other. I'm not sure if that's that much of a factor, but I'm sure it changed it a bit.

WAYNE FERREIRA: 2000, probably 2002, and then maybe even once back in '97, '98, for a very brief moment. But I think 2000, the year I finished -- I think I finished '99 at 53 on the ranking, which is the worst I was, I was going to give it up then, and decided to give 2000 a good go and try my best. I finished I think 13 at the end of that year. So that was the main time that I probably would have given up if things hadn't worked out.

WAYNE FERREIRA: I haven't seen him for years. I haven't.

WAYNE FERREIRA: Me personally?

WAYNE FERREIRA: We could sit here for hours on that one (smiling). I don't think it's that good right now. I think it needs a lot of help. I went through that whole process of trying to help it. I still think that there are people that are going to try and help it. I think it's in a bit of a struggle from a lot of aspects. Needs a lot of help. I'm not sure if I'm going to be around to do it anymore. But it definitely could do with a bit of a revamp and new ideas and try and improve it a little bit.

WAYNE FERREIRA: In a lot of things. Most things (smiling).