TMS MONTE CARLO

April 17, 2001

Nicolas Escude

NICOLAS ESCUDE: Well, this makes me want to stop the clay court season immediately! No, it's encouraging. I will need time and patience.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I think I made more than 20 unforced errors, and I have the impression that there are many attacking points that I was not able to put in and that I was not able to stand up. Every time he was touching the ball, I had the impression that he had a quarter of an hour to get himself in position and to hit wherever he wanted. Whereas, as far as I was concerned, I had the impression that it was too fast, and that sometimes on the contrary it was very slow. He was hitting the ball hard. I was at the right place on the court. And when the ball just bounced on the ground, I should have had time to do 50 little footsteps. My footwork has to be improved on clay.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I played one hour in Paris on Thursday. That was just making contact with this surface. I played an hour and fifteen minutes Friday arriving here. I played twice from one o'clock to four p.m. on Saturday. And once Sunday, and another time yesterday. So all in all, it has to be about seven hours.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I was hoping to be more aggressive. I expected a lot of my serve - to bring me free points or to give me opportunities to attack just afterwards. This was the case at certain moments, but at other moments it wasn't the case and I lost games because he broke my serve. It was not easy.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I went back home, I slept three days in a row without going out. I had an afternoon nap, and eleven hours of sleep in the nights.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: Yes.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: That's for sure. I could have had a better draw, but this season I will meet many good players on clay. Maybe it's a pity to play against him first round in the first clay court tournament, but so what? It's his favorite surface, his game is at its best on this surface. However, at the level of preparation, he was at the same stage as I was, but he seemed to adapt to the surface faster than I did. It's strange to think that you have to hit the ball 40 times for one point. You have to visit the court all around, especially against that style of player. When he tries to put you down, you find yourself two meters behind the baseline. Of course it's very different from indoors or outside hardcourts where you can suddenly break into a point. Here, on clay, when you start stepping back, you lost the point.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: No, but I'll have to adapt to a new style of play.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: Yes. It's like those who start playing after the grass season; they would like to have more grass. For me, it's clay, or else it should be very warm and the courts should be very dry and I should have two months of preparation before that.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: Official, I don't know. I will not enter into this kind of discussion. Yesterday evening I watched television and they said that the first thing that Clement said was, "Clay court bores me." I thought about the same thing earlier on today. I don't want to think too much about it and start a crisis like I had last year during the whole period of clay court season. I was totally lost. I tried to play a certain way and another way, and finally I was not playing at all. This time I want to try to do good things as far as I can. I will never have a special clay court game, and I will never be very aggressive on this kind of court. I will have to find a medium term between the two, hoping that the season will go past very quickly.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I will stay here because there are many players, then I'm going to Barcelona next week and then I have two Masters, Hamburg and the French Open.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: And some of them are on my program because I have to go there. It's funny, but the first thing we thought with Arnaud when we arrived together on Friday is exactly that, we hit a few balls together and practically at the same time, after five minutes, I said, "Oh, I can't wait to have grass." And Arnaud said, "I can't wait before playing on cement."

NICOLAS ESCUDE: That's for sure. At least two and a half months.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: Yes.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I play every week.

NICOLAS ESCUDE: I hope the four weeks. The first three are certain. The fourth, I hope so. And generally speaking, I'm happy to go there.