U.S. OPEN

August 30, 1994

Mark Woodforde

MARK WOODFORDE: Well, I was trying to win a match basically on a second serve and I think at this level of tennis if you try to play to a standard of that, then, you know, you deserve to get your ass kicked. So I guess in the end I thought the level I was playing at, I got what I deserved. So, you know, that was basically it.

MARK WOODFORDE: You ask me? It obviously went back to Australia while I came to New York. I've been playing well and serving well and, you know, I've been practicing with a lot of tough guys leading up to here, and been handling them quite well and today, it just, you know, probably a combination of, you know, thinking that it was, you know, it is a tough first round and, you know, it just wasn't there. So, no matter what I was trying to do, it was worse. I've come off and I have a very sore back now, it's just from throwing the ball very low and I obviously couldn't do anything to -- the adjustments I was making was just making it worse and so I lost the match.

MARK WOODFORDE: I don't know what it is for the other guys. Basically, I've got nothing to be scared about playing Marc Rosset and nothing to be scared about playing the first round of U.S. Open. And I've played many opens, and if I start shaking in my boots about playing first round matches, I might as well retire tomorrow or stop playing singles all together. I mean-- to go out there and maybe a few guys are questioning whether the umpires are doing the correct job. I mean, there are people moving back and forth constantly here and I think there seems to be a big question mark on whether we're playing under ATP rules or under Grand Slam rules and maybe there's some sort of problem that maybe -- not that it affected the result of my outcome today, and if it had been following what Becker and Ivanisevic did, then there would have been justice and I should have won because Rosset was a seed and if the seeds are falling, perhaps I should have been out there with him a two set to Love lead and a breakup in the fourth is pretty unforgivable.

MARK WOODFORDE: I was wondering when the umpire was going to grab control of the match and start penalizing my opponent. I'm basically sick to death of having so-called professional umpires sitting in the chair doing absolutely bugger all and letting guys get away from it. As far as I'm concerned there are two rules, one for the top guys and one for the rest of us and obviously he's allowed to get away with something like that. If it was me out there throwing my racket, I'm sure I would have been hit. So it gets pretty demoralizing when they're allowed to -- when they're conversing in French as well. So, I mean, basically the match, I should have won. I said that I was trying to -- the way I was playing was winning on a second serve and I couldn't achieve that today. If I did I would have come off and absolutely been laughed in my face, because I'd never done that before. He's too good a player to not make adjustments to-- opposing someone who's just hitting second serves at him. He should have won -- well, I should have won from leading two sets to one, but I'm not surprised that he came back facing so many second serves that he did.

MARK WOODFORDE: He was rushing everything in the first two sets and I think he just settled down. Just settled down totally and mentally tried to reassess that he wasn't facing too many first serves and that not to get panicky too much. I think he really started to came down and, you know, instead of getting three points, I was hitting volleys around my shoelaces and then he hit a couple of winners and so on and you know the match changed around and he severed better as well. I was getting a lot of second serves myself and doing something with them that didn't work out like that for the whole five sets.

MARK WOODFORDE: Yup.

MARK WOODFORDE: Wimbledon, I've done that, and I don't know if that's the only time. I've played many, many five-set matches in my career at the Slams and, you know, it is a great feeling coming back in two sets to Love down, you feel that, you know, the match has sort of slipped away from you totally and you just really hung in there and you've obviously had to make a major adjustment to come back from two sets to Love. I think at the standard that we play at, if someone is playing really, really well, they should virtually closeout the match over the best of five sets. If you hang in there and come back, you've really held yourself together well and it is a big victory.

End of FastScripts...