RCA CHAMPIONSHIPS

August 15, 1995

Jerome Golmard

JEROME GOLMARD: (as translated) Jerome said at the beginning of the year he played a lot of qualies. He went to Australia, had some good results in Australia, played a good match against Agassi second round, but he says that he prefers to play on clay, because this is a slower surface and so he has more time to prepare his strokes and he says as well he can play very well on hard courts because he has a very powerful serve. Today he was a little bit anxious. He couldn't play the rallies, so had to go for the shots to make winners. He served well and so he hit the ball well; that is the reason why he won the match today.

JEROME GOLMARD: (as translated) he says, yes, it is very exciting to have won a match like this one. It is very motivating for the matches to come now and he says if I had lost this match, it would have been because of my physical condition because I got cramps at 2-All in the third set on the thigh and generally when I get cramps, there is no way I can really recover during the match, but this time because it was Jim Courier in front of me, I had the motivation to fight as hard as I could and it worked. At the end of the match, I hit some unbelievable shots and they were all in and that is the reason why I won.

JEROME GOLMARD: (as translated) he says that yes, he was supposed to play the qualies, but he got a phone call on Friday morning from the ATP, from the Monte Carlo office saying that he was in and he said that if this phone call came five minutes later, I had left the room already to go to Indianapolis to play the qualies, so he said it was good news to be in the main draw and that is No. 1 and No. 2, it was good news as well because it meant that I could come to Indianapolis later; I could have one more night in Cincinnati and I don't have to pay the hotel in Cincinnati. It is good for me because it is very expensive to pay all my expenses in the United States, so it was double good news.

JEROME GOLMARD: (as translated) he said that, you know, he played most of the matches when he was younger, it was on clay, so he is used to clay more. There is one fact which is quite funny, he said that one of the best match he played in his career was, I think it was in Estoril, last year. He went through the qualies; then he played Karbacher. He beat him, but he was so tired he said, instead of playing from the backcourt, he played serve and volley every time because otherwise he couldn't have been able to play the whole match because he was so tired, and he said that today it was quite the same, he played serve and volley game, but normally, it is not his own game. His game is to play from the baseline. Now he realizes that he has to go to the net; that maybe if he wants to improve, he has to be more aggressive and attack and play maybe every matches like he played today going to the net. His physical condition is improving. When he started on the circuit, it was last year, he had never done any physical training, nothing, so when you have to play these guys, professional players, if you are not fit physically, no way you can win, so he says it was very tough for him because he didn't -- so far he hasn't done anything, but now he works a little bit more.

JEROME GOLMARD: He said that of course he knew Jim Courier. He saw him playing on the TV at the French Open and different other tournaments also. But he never saw him play him live, in a stadium, so that it was -- for him it was a big thrill; he didn't know the stadium court here; even though he was here last year, so he didn't know the stadium court and he knew that Jim was a hard hitter; that he was hitting the ball very hard, but he didn't know exactly what to expect and he didn't have any tactic and so said, okay, so I am on the court, let us see what I can do, but so he knew Courier's game a little bit, but just on the TV.

JEROME GOLMARD: (as translated) in English. Jim could have talked French to him, but he didn't talk French to him after the match. He just said in English, okay, just "well played. You played a good match." Before the match he said that he thought that at the end he could say a word in French to Jim because he was not expecting the match to finish like this and then at the end of the match he was so excited that he didn't remember that he wanted to say to him some words in French, so he didn't say anything.

JEROME GOLMARD: (as translated) right thigh. 2-All in the third set.