COMPAQ GRAND SLAM CUP

September 23, 1997

Todd Woodbridge

Q. Todd, what can you say about the match generally?

TODD WOODBRIDGE: Well, I mean, I was close. I had a couple of chances there in the third. But, basically, I was underprepared because of coming in so late on a court that was super fast against a guy with a huge serve. And then, you know, I thought I did fairly well considering the amount of time we had to get adjusted to playing. Then the other thing that I didn't do well was serve. I served, you know, under 50 percent or something. So that's like playing behind the eight ball before you ever get going. I did well to stay there without a serve.

TODD WOODBRIDGE: Yeah. Got the two breaks and returned great the first games, jumped on him. The court is so quick, eventually you're going to have trouble returning him. He got better, too, with his serving, mixed it up, got closer to the lines. You know, that was always going to be tough to keep up where I started with. But, then perhaps I played a lousy first game on my serve in the second set, dropped my serve quickly. If I could have put some pressure on there and got to the latter stage of that set, I might have been able to sneak it out. You never know what happens at that stage when you get to a tiebreaker.

TODD WOODBRIDGE: Yeah, very frustrating. Because you don't really get to play. I mean, on the return games, you're sticking your racquet out and you're trying to block it back. That's about it. You know, you make it if you're lucky. If you don't, it's a quick point. You know, the court for good tennis is not a very good court right now. It's too quick. Because you can't have any rallies. You can't play all-around tennis. You've either got to be full-out aggressive or sit back and hope to pass him. At the end of the day, you're not going to win that way.

TODD WOODBRIDGE: I mean, I felt like I hung in okay. I mean, 7-5 in the third is still pretty good. But as I said, I was prepared in all of that aspect, but you can't prepare for getting off a plane and having two hits on a court and playing a match. You just can't do that. I was actually interested why, in particular, myself, Mark and Rios, who game from different continents, had to play today. There's a match tomorrow that guys had Davis Cup to play in Europe. See if that's really fair. We had to try and wing it. If you get a rest after, I would rather play two days in a row, that way I could have gotten more adjusted and given myself a fairer chance.