TMS - FORO ITALICO

May 12, 2000

Alex Corretja

Q. Alex, you have, I think, a 9-1 tiebreak record this year. Are you aware that it's that good, and do you feel really confident going into an important tiebreak like that?

ALEX CORRETJA: Yes. If you look at my tiebreak record ever, I think I am losing it. So after I finish last year, I decided to focus a little bit more on tiebreaks because they are quite important. Sometimes they keep you in the match, sometimes they make you finish. So that's why now I go point by point in tiebreakers. No matter what happen, today I was 4-1 up, two serves to go 6-1, and I lost both of them. So it is good to see that I can finish on breakers. I didn't know it was 9-1, but I knew it was little advantage in breakers.

ALEX CORRETJA: Once you are in Semifinals, you always feel that you are 100 percent, especially when you beat these kind of guys here in this tournament, and especially today which I beat really, really great player as Dominik. And especially when I lost to him in Monte Carlo in Quarterfinals, I had a lot of advantages in that match and I lost a lot of chances. So after he win yesterday, I thought it would be nice day for me if I can play him and beat him. Fortunately, I believe I played great tennis in the first set and great tennis in the second set. So no complaints about my tennis in the whole match.

ALEX CORRETJA: Well, of course I said already many times I love this tournament. I love the courts, especially today. This is Rome for me, this is great court, the ball bounce high, it goes fast and it is pretty nice to see that you are out there playing good tennis. But it's terrible to play in conditions where the mobile phone is ringing the whole time. That is the only complaint I have about the tournament. Besides that, I love the food, I love the town, I love the hotel, I love the court, the Foro Italico is great to play in. I hope I can repeat my win, even if still long way to go, because I never won the same tournament twice. So now I'm pretty close to this one. I hope to finish it winning.

ALEX CORRETJA: I will prefer to play Costa as a friend and as an opponent because he's a great player on clay, but even Guga is tough to play. Both of them are going to be really difficult to beat. As I said before, with my heart, I would prefer to play Albert because he's my friend and I want him to -- I want to see him in Semifinals. So I don't care even

if -- I would say maybe if I will prefer to play against another player, I prefer to see my friend in Semifinals. That means that he's also playing well. So I'm not looking for revenge against Guga. Even if he wins, it would be nice to be again in Semifinals against him. But I prefer to play Albert.

ALEX CORRETJA: So-so. It's a good question because I think you get to see kind of matches like today that maybe just, you know, the first set, just another tiebreaker. I remember last year against Squillari here in Quarterfinals, the crowd get really involved. But they need to see close matches to get involved, especially since they don't have Italians in Quarterfinals, which they create a different atmosphere. Since they have eight different players almost every year, for them it's difficult to focus on one player. So that's why they need to have close matches to get involved. And that's why at the end I was also trying to make support from the crowd, and I actually had them because Dominik double-faulted. After, they start to scream and all these things.