US OPEN

September 7, 2000

Todd Martin

Q. Get down a break in the fourth. Are you starting to wonder if you have another five-setter in you?

TODD MARTIN: Well, yeah. I was more curious whether he had any errors left in him. He played a great third set, at least half, if not more, of a great fourth set. Finally made it up in my mind to make him see me a little bit more. I think just putting that little extra pressure on him at least changed the rhythm of the match a little bit, and maybe also took some of his ball striking away.

Q. When you say "to make him see me a little bit more"?

TODD MARTIN: Just come to the net a little bit more. You know, not try to make things so pretty, I guess, you know, trying to scrap some ugly points, too. You know, that's part of the game, and it's part of the reason why I've been able to do well here this week. It was an important decision for me to make tonight.

Q. Got off to a pretty early lead in the first two sets. He did play kind of a flawless third set. What was it about it that seemed to be different for you?

TODD MARTIN: More than anything else, he served great. As I walked from side to side more often on his serve, you know, it took a little bit of the rhythm out of the match for me, watching him ace me, watching him ace me, watching him ace me. When I got to my serve, if I didn't just sit on him with my serve then, you know, I had to come up with shots that I hadn't hit for five minutes, since the last time I had to serve. It's nice to have -- you put a lot of pressure on your opponent's serve by your serve, but you also take a little pressure off your serve if you can play good returning games - and I wasn't able to play good returning games. Seemed like, you know, for every four points I was winning, he was winning six. Despite that being 1-All, 2-All, so be it, you feel it. You feel like he's getting a groove and you're not.

Q. Towards the end of his career, Jimmy Connors knew how to incite a crowd better than anybody. You saw some of those moments. Are you thinking about that at all, taking a little bit of a Connors with you?

TODD MARTIN: No, I'm Todd Martin, first of all. I've never on the court grabbed myself - and I don't plan on it. However, you do need to draw on whatever energy there is there. Consciously you don't say, "What can I do to get the crowd going?" You play good tennis to get the crowd going. From there, their energy inspires more energy from you. People get excited not because you pump your fist and you go crazy. They get excited when the guy they want to win starts to do well, all right? Then it just speeds up the snowballing process, if you can show them how important it is to you after they show you how important it is to them. I mean, it happens in a split second. If I'm up a breakpoint, and I play a good point, I win the point, hit a good forehand volley to win the point, they go crazy first. I don't have time to start flopping around, going crazy, until they already know that I won the point, and they're already excited for me. Then I feel that. I feel also the thrill of the winning the point and the excitement of being up a break, but it just doesn't happen that quickly. Honest to God. In football, when a guy throws a bomb, the crowd sees what happens before the players understand what happens. They've got the best view. I don't know where Thomas is when I hit a shot. I don't know if he's not going to get it. They know sometimes before I even finish hitting my shot.

Q. I'm just saying that earlier in your career, we didn't see a lot of this from you (fist pumping).

TODD MARTIN: I don't think you've watched me enough.

Q. Yes, I have.

TODD MARTIN: I don't think you have. It's not supposed to happen every day of every year. You know, Olympic athletes, conventional Olympic athletes like track athletes, the whole thing, they plan on peaking maybe three or four times a year, okay? Every bit of their training goes towards those three or four competitions a year, all right? They compete, but it's not about being their best. The same thing with your emotions. You can't draw on your emotions. That's why Lleyton Hewitt's youth is so effective for him because he has two years' worth of tennis under him, and everything makes him wide-eyed because he wants to be a world beater. For those of us who have been around for a long time, you watch the guys come out of college, they come out and every match they play, they're pumping, they're going crazy until they understand that that's not necessarily the best way to compete for them when they have to go into the locker room and look at the guy that they just pumped their fists at all day long. For me, you know, this is the US Open. This incites a little bit of energy from me. It's exciting. To be able to feed off the crowd, it's not necessarily them feeding off of me. I feel it's me feeding off of them.

Q. At what point in the third set did you start to drag just a little bit physically?

TODD MARTIN: You know, rarely does physical drag come before mental drag or emotional drag. You know, when I lost my serve in the third set, you know, that's a big hit after being four sets a couple nights ago, after I served for the first set, a couple good sets tonight without losing my serve. That mental disappointment leads to physical fatigue, or the acknowledgment of physical fatigue.

Q. How do you get it back?

TODD MARTIN: Well, you know, he played a bit of a shaky game, and I played some good plays at I think 4-2 in the fourth maybe. It wasn't until then that I really felt good about how I was playing. You know, maybe in the couple games before, in the changeovers, I was thinking about how to change the momentum. I said earlier that I wanted to make him see me. I didn't want to try to hit the shots anymore, so I came and came and came as much as I could, as much as his shots would allow me. It turns out that even when I wasn't able to come to the net, he made some errors. That was effective.

Q. You talked earlier about how difficult it is to keep your composure against a big service game. What do you plan to do with Marat Safin, who has a pretty good service game?

TODD MARTIN: Well, I thought Thomas served as well as he ever has against me - personally much better. I wasn't exactly expecting him to go through games where I didn't get a second serve or to go through games where he hit three aces or that type of thing. Against Marat, there's nothing but to expect that. It's a little bit more like grass court tennis when you play Marat. You understand there's going to be some Love games on the other side of the net, but you also understand that if you hang in there, you might be able to create some opportunities for yourself.

Q. You said earlier you wanted to make it less pretty midway through the match. Do you feel generally if it's uglier, it's going to be in your favor?

TODD MARTIN: I think the uglier the tennis, typically the better tennis player wins, all right? I go out against some guys, and Thomas is not one of them, but I go out against some guys, I look across the net, I think, "No matter how badly I execute, I feel like this guy's got to play very well to win, guys who do pretty well." It's because I just feel like I know what to do at what times, which shot to hit during what rally, so be it, better than a lot of the guys. I think, you know, I've been watching a lot of the tennis on the TV when I've been back at the hotel. I think, yeah, it was Ted Robinson that was saying how he felt like Pete Sampras' quickness is so underrated. He's fast. But he'd be almost as good if he weren't as fast. He knows what things to do and what shot to hit, when to put the pressure on the other guy and when to let things flow. That's why he's the best player in the world. That's why he's won all these tournaments. It's not because he's got a great serve or a great forehand. All those things are facts. When it comes down to it, he's a better tennis player than most of the other guys.

Q. When Johansson is serving at 4-5 in the fourth set, grossly overhit an overhead. Did you draw on anything from the mistakes that he made?

TODD MARTIN: The game I broke him in the fourth?

Q. No, he held serve in that game before you went up 6-5.

TODD MARTIN: At 5-All.

Q. He hit the overhead.

TODD MARTIN: Or 5-4.

Q. Does that influence the way you play him, knowing that he's getting a little frustrated, a little bit shaky?

TODD MARTIN: You know, the more I challenge my opponent to play, the more confident I am that I can challenge him repetitively. Even in this last game that I broke him at 6-5, you know, I said some things to myself before the point. "Do this so even if you don't get through this game, he knows what you're going to do." You plant the seed for the tiebreak. At that point in time, if it's 6-All, I still have the momentum, I still am in control of that series of games or, you know, time span of tennis. You need to take those opportunities and at least leave an imprint on the other guy. Bad tennis does the same thing. If I make some errors, the other guy's going to be a lot more confident going into crucial situations.

Q. The year you had coming into The Open, talk about what it means to be in the semifinals now.

TODD MARTIN: Well, I think the first eight months of this year have nothing -- have no bearing on how I feel being in the semis of The Open. I had a great year coming into The Open last year. Being in the semis of The Open was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Cutters are still sharp. This is awesome.

Q. The winning point, you get a nice rally, decided that it was going to the backhand corner. Very little margin for error.

TODD MARTIN: Love-15?

Q. Final point of the match. How did you construct that point?

TODD MARTIN: I can't even remember. I remember one point from that game, other than the missed forehand volley on my first match point. It was the Love-15 point. I defended the court pretty well. He continued to have control of the point. I had sort of the tweener. I should have rallied the ball and waited for a better opportunity, but I chose to pull the trigger. I hit a great forehand down the line. I can't answer your match point question. Sorry.

Q. It felt like the right thing to do at the time?

TODD MARTIN: For the life of me, I'm pretty good about remembering points, it's the last one, I can't remember it.

Q. You were exchanging forehands down the middle. You hit a forehand to his backhand corner.

TODD MARTIN: He missed the passing shot. Thank you. Charlie doesn't write things down (laughter).

Q. He netted a backhand. You made a good deep forehand.

TODD MARTIN: At that point in time, at that Love-15 point, I hit a good forehand down the line. It's not my greatest shot in the world. I don't think he's exactly expecting me to do something. You know, I had done well with being aggressive with the forehand in that game, and earlier in the match. You know, if that's the way the point is going to stay, if we're just going to hit the ball down the middle or cross-court forehands, at that point in time I don't think he's tight. I'm the one that's tight. I've got the opportunity to win. He's got nothing to lose. I feel like, you know, take the shot when you have it and see what happens.

Q. How heavy did your legs feel to begin the match? I heard you say on TV you were hoping you'd be able to start, you were worried about a slow start.

TODD MARTIN: I mean, they didn't feel good. They don't feel great right now. I didn't feel great last year when I came out to play Dosedel in the quarters. I understood that I didn't need to play great tonight, I didn't need to hit the ball great, I didn't need to do everything perfectly, I just needed to do something at the right time better than Thomas could. You know, the first set is the greatest example. He got through his first two service games with me looking like a stooge, and I squeezed by. Next thing you know, I play one good game in the first set, and I'm in the clear. That's why Pete's better. That's why Pete's better than everybody else. Even now, I still think he's the best player. It's because he does the right thing when he needs to. He can go out and play a bad match, but he does the right thing when he needs to.

Q. How much of the emotion carried you through at least the first two sets? Seemed like you were going on adrenaline, too.

TODD MARTIN: You know, I was playing. That's the easiest way to answer it. You do what you do. If we would have played on Court 16 or something like that, maybe I wouldn't have felt as good as I did, all things being considered.

Q. Is there a time in your career --?

TODD MARTIN: -- where I wanted to leave a press conference immediately? Yes.

Q. Is there a time in your career where the game suddenly becomes simple and understandable, not nearly as complicated as it is when your head is full of things learning things in the first couple years of the Tour?

TODD MARTIN: It does. It happens as soon as you start to realize everybody that you've respected and trusted with your game, as far as a coaching standpoint, as soon as you realize ^ forget yourself, and prove it to yourself, "These guys know what they're talking about, they're right, I should be doing more of this, less of that, it's not as complicated as I'm making it." That's when it happens.

Q. When did that happen?

TODD MARTIN: That probably happened in the summer of '98. Actually, at Indianapolis, I find the conditions there to be so fast and so hard to control the ball, and I played Arnaud Clement, just before I played Thomas Johansson in that tournament I was getting drummed. I didn't feel like I could hit the broadside of a barn. I backed off and tried not to miss the rest of the match. I learned that although I'm not the fleetest of foot, I'm not the most talented of groundstrokers, I have a solid base to my game and I don't need to try to win every point. The other guy is just as capable of losing as much as I am.

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