US OPEN

September 2, 2003

Taylor Dent

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, well, I actually hurt it a few days ago. I had gotten treatment on it and thought it was taken care of. Because of the rain all day yesterday, I hit some very late indoors. It was bothering me a little bit. I iced it, had it massaged and thought it was gone. Just hitting out there with Todd in the warm-up, I kind of felt it a little bit. I was in the training room, getting it looked at. It pretty much got worse and worse coming on and coming off the courts with the rain delay.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, you know, I could have bought some time until tomorrow. But the way it's feeling now, I'm guessing I'm gonna be having a tough time walking around tomorrow. It's pretty sore right now. If I wake up and it is feeling perfect tomorrow, then I'll be very angry. But I doubt that's gonna happen.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, I was told it's a hamstring strain.

TAYLOR DENT: You know, you can look at it positive and you can look at it negative. If I was being negative about it, I guess I could say, "Oh, I missed a huge opportunity tonight." But I'm gonna try and take the positive route and say, "I was really giving the No. 1 player in the world all he could handle tonight." I was, you know -- I felt like I had a really good chance to do some damage. So I think that's very exciting. As soon as I get my body in order, I can't wait to keep playing that kind of tennis and executing it. I just, you know, am interested to see my results, that's for sure.

TAYLOR DENT: That's going to be a question probably throughout my whole career, that I'm realizing now. It's a shame that I have to deal with it. But those are the cards I've been dealt. So I just have to do the best I can and stay in the training room, you know, put up my bed there and just have them work on my body every opportunity I get. I'm willing to do that if it means me being a champion. I think that's a very small sacrifice.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, I mean, if I could have got that set to a tiebreaker or won that third set, I would have stayed out there for a fourth set. But, you know, maybe for the fourth if I could just, you know, keep the pain -- maybe it stayed on an even keel. It was getting worse. If I would have stayed out there for five sets, even if I would have won the fourth being down two sets to one, I would be kneeling to hit my serve.

TAYLOR DENT: Actually, the only thing it hurt on was my serve. If I could have played return games the whole time, I would have stayed out there. But it was just killing on my serve. I couldn't get up at all.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, some funky kick motion. Push-off, I don't know.

TAYLOR DENT: Thanks, I appreciate that.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, I was basically -- you know, he controls the point I think better than anybody in tennis right now. So I was out there with the mentality of, "If he's in control of the point, I'm just gonna try and scrap and claw and dig and get ahead." But as soon as he hit a ball that was slower, I was gonna give it a ride. I think you saw that in the first-set breaker. I think I missed that backhand by 30 feet. But, yeah, that was my game plan.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, that's what I thought. If I could win that set somehow, then I'll stay out there for a fourth. But losing that set, there was just no chance my leg was gonna hold up for two more.

TAYLOR DENT: It depends how aggressive I am with it. If I'm very aggressive, I'm very confident that it's gonna be, you know, a matter of days, maybe 10, 14 days. If I slack on it, could be forever (smiling).

TAYLOR DENT: I don't know. I'm not really worried. I think my ranking and my results will come because I'm playing good tennis. And as soon as I'm healthy, I'll go back out there.

TAYLOR DENT: I am surprised, definitely, how well I did. I'm not surprised with the aches and pains I got. I thought I'd be getting them in the first and second rounds because once you take a long break and you start coming back, normally the thing that you hurt is perfect and everything else in your body breaks down. That's kind of what happened here, I think, is just my body wasn't used to the pounding and it finally broke down. I'm pleasantly surprised with how I'm playing. Hopefully, I can keep getting better.

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, he told me to stop at around 4-all or 4-5 on the change.

TAYLOR DENT: He got my attention and he just gave it that one (indicating). I told him, "Just let me play the set. Let me play the set." It's understandable for him because I have a bad habit of staying out there with injuries. Yeah, so, that's his job, to make sure I'm doing the smart thing out there.

TAYLOR DENT: Again, I was thinking about it in the middle of the third. I'm thinking, "What do I do?" I was thinking, "If I win this set, I'll keep playing. If not, there's no point."

TAYLOR DENT: I'm inconsolable after the match. So he didn't say anything.

TAYLOR DENT: This year, okay, missed Australian Open because I was running stadium, doing stairs, and I got a femoral condyle contusion. There you go. I know all the terms now, I'm very good. That's basically a bone contusion on the knee. That was fine. Then I played through there. Then the next one I had was the back.

TAYLOR DENT: That was after the French, yeah. That was during Nottingham, which was the week before Wimbledon. Then I had...

TAYLOR DENT: Yeah, I've had some back problems and I just had to get it taken care of. It was probably my fault for letting it go too long without getting it seen to. Then after that was -- I injured the nerve in my hand, the ulnar nerve. Just pinched it funky. Then this one.

TAYLOR DENT: Which one?

TAYLOR DENT: No, no. I was fine for the Ljubicic match - almost (smiling).

TAYLOR DENT: I think I've just been hitting so many serves lately. I just wanted to come to this tournament and hold serve as much as possible because I feel like I can break on a pretty regular basis. And I think it was just an overuse injury.

TAYLOR DENT: 5-4, it was 5-4.