DAVIS CUP - SWEDEN vs ITALY

December 4, 1998

Paolo Bertolucci

Q. It's probably very difficult for you, but can you express your feelings and emotions at this moment? It's been a very difficult day, to say the least, for you.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: Surely it's been a particularly unfortunate day. It was very important to be 1-All at the end of this day. But Gaudenzi's injury, after a great recovery, made it really hard for us, for our team. We lost a player, first of all. Of course, the team is in a bad atmosphere. We don't have any excuse, because Gustafsson played a very good match. But Davide was shocked by the injury of Gaudenzi.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: Tomorrow for sure will be Nargiso and Sanguinetti.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: We were in contact with the doctor all the time. All the practices were under the control of the doctor. The doctor was the doctor that did the surgery on Gaudenzi. He was ready. Even if we practiced a lot, we did a lot of practice matches. The 70 days that he was away from the matches made a lot of difference today. He played five hours, and it was really in a good rhythm, so it was really tough on him, and the injury made it even tougher.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: He hasn't been lucky with the Davis Cup finals, but I haven't seen anything like that. He was very badly injured. Even if we played in San Francisco and other finals, it was a really bad injury.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: No, it's not finished. I said that Sweden was the favorite, of course. As I said before these matches, Sweden was even the best team for us. It was really tough to play against them. We need a lot of miracles, but this is sport. We will fight tomorrow, even if Sanguinetti and Nargiso never played together. We were down a little bit, because we are 0-2 down, but we'll try hard tomorrow.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: Yes, of course. We are losing because of an injury. Gaudenzi is a really important player inside the team and outside the team, inside the court and outside the court. We are really psychologically (bothered) about this situation today, but we'll try to do our best tomorrow in doubles. We'll really try to fight tomorrow.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: This is a question that you will have to ask the doctor of the team and Andrea Gaudenzi's doctor.

CAPTAIN BERTOLUCCI: He didn't have any problems during practice. Of course, he had a little bit of pain. But the doctor said that it was normal after surgery, after recovering from the surgery. I think Andrea wanted to play. He wanted to play badly today because Davis Cup final is very important.