GREAT AMERICAN INSURANCE ATP CHAMPIONSHIP

August 12, 1998

Todd Martin

TODD MARTIN: I am. I played very well against Fabrice, and today I played -- I did some things very well against Thomas. And really the most important thing was that I served well and then I approached the rest of the match very calmly because I knew I was serving well and I felt comfortable with the way my serve fit into his return game.

TODD MARTIN: Yeah, the plane was flying about 380 -- no. Last week, I played terrible and I ran into a great player in Yevgeny Kafelnikov. So it's not such a big to-do to lose badly to him. But I really felt badly about my game. And then I got here Friday -- Friday afternoon and practiced and I never felt real good in practice. And against Fabrice I sort of found a balance between being aggressive and challenging my opponent to play. Now that at least continued on through today.

TODD MARTIN: The elbow feels great. It's the rest of me I'm concerned about. I feel real good right now.

TODD MARTIN: Not really. I've been taking pretty good care of it and doing a lot of strengthening and stretching exercises. So if it fails me now, then at least it's not my fault.

TODD MARTIN: Yeah, I always ice it. And the most important thing is to make sure it's real loose and warm before I start playing because that's the easiest time to tweak it a little bit.

TODD MARTIN: Yeah, it's mental thing. Still wearing a neoprene sleeve on my elbow and it's 95 degrees out. So I'm not too proud to admit that I'm a little psyched out by it. But I feel it helps and if it is just a placebo effect, that's fine. Take all the Vitamin C I need.

TODD MARTIN: This year is the first time I've had to play a Davis Cup Tie in the summer. In the years prior to this one, I've taken a considerable amount of time off after Wimbledon because of the way I do it. I have an 8-week trip over in Europe. So that's 10 out of 12 weeks. That's a lot of time for me. Feel like it's a great opportunity to take a minor off-season in the middle of the year; take a couple weeks of good rest and then work hard, get ready for the summer tournaments because you're going -- you're going to need to be in shape and also try to be as fresh as possible for most of the tournaments. So I try to do as close to that as possible, considering I had Davis Cup. So I took a week off right after Wimbledon and had a good practice week at Davis Cup. And took another few days off but then got pretty much back right to work getting ready for Toronto, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Toronto don't go like I had hoped, but so far this week's gone well and that's all I ask is that I get better by the week.

TODD MARTIN: A little bit because that's there's a -- I've always felt like Indianapolis is a difficult place to play. For some reason, the balls play a lot different. It's a good practice in that regard. But the conditions aren't going to be too much different as much as the heat and humidity compared to here. It's just a matter of getting out there and being comfortable and, you know, I'm not going to hit the ball well every day. I didn't hit the ball as well today as I did against Fabrice. But he -- you can approach it mentally as similarly as possible and if that keeps happening, if I keep approaching the matches like I have for the last two, then I'm confident with the rest of this week and then with next week.

TODD MARTIN: Well, I've played him three times in the last probably 10 months and I've lost three very close matches to him. So I'm going to have to win a close match maybe instead of losing. It's just -- he's a fun guy for me to play against. He challenges you, start to finish. He's running at you all the time and that's -- that's probably my -- the toughest type of opponent for me to play against, so it will be fun.

TODD MARTIN: Any time you don't see me at a Davis Cup Tie, it's because the captain doesn't want me there. And you think -- I think we'll still do fine. Jim's done great in Davis Cup this year. Richie's -- I've traded phone calls with him this week and it sounds like he's pretty healthy and might start playing as soon as soon as next week. And, you know, Andre's -- Andre's got his fund-raiser out in very Vegas and I think whoever replaces him will -- we've got a number of choices and I'm confident that Gully will choose the right one. And one thing's for sure: Guys that he's looking at will fit in well with the team, and I think that's probably the most important thing.