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WIMBLEDONJune 29, 2007Eric ButoracJamie MurrayLONDON, ENGLAND THE MODERATOR: Questions for Eric and Jamie. Q. What turned it around? JAMIE MURRAY: I guess -- I mean, I started to serve a lot better, which we struggled for the first couple of sets on my serve. I think Eric played pretty well for the whole way through the match, probably carried me a bit today. I can't say. We were hustling through the whole set. We played a couple really good points to break serve, win the set. We got the confidence. I think we won the next two sets pretty easily. We didn't really have any breakpoints on serve or anything like that. That's about it really. ERIC BUTORAC: Yeah. Q. When you find yourself a set down like that, do you have a conversation at the end of that set and change something or not? JAMIE MURRAY: Not really. I mean, I just played a bad set of tennis. I served really bad and stuff. Didn't help him out at all. Yeah, we knew if we started playing better, I started making a few more first serves, we'd start to hold a lot easier. And we did that. I thought, to be honest, the last two sets we won pretty comfortable, dominated them I thought. Q. Did the crowd help? JAMIE MURRAY: Yeah. We were loving it. ERIC BUTORAC: Yeah, it was great. JAMIE MURRAY: Especially the guys who got escorted off the grounds for their chant. That was quite amusing. Q. Is it better now with the LTA than it was in the time that you were coming through as a youngster? JAMIE MURRAY: Well, I didn't really have -- really ever have any problems with the LTA. That wasn't the case. I mean, they've been very, very good to me my whole career, ever since I was like 10, 11 years old. They've supported me a lot, given me a lot of funding. I'm obviously very grateful for that and thankful for that. Hopefully I can kind of repay them with what I'm doing now on the doubles tour. Q. Do you think the changes they've made under Roger Draper are good changes, will produce improvements over the course of time? JAMIE MURRAY: I guess only time will tell. I can't really answer that question, can I? I'm not really in that sort of position to, I don't think. Q. You have more idea than me. JAMIE MURRAY: I don't know. I guess you'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. Q. What about the idea specifically of bringing in big-name coaches? It costs a lot of money. JAMIE MURRAY: It costs money, yeah, but we've got money so why not use it? Q. Eric, are you feeling a tiny bit British this evening? Are we going to have you as a Brit? JAMIE MURRAY: He said he's going to play for Croatia in the Davis Cup tie (laughter). ERIC BUTORAC: Croatia is the one heritage I actually have. Yeah, no, it's been great over here. I joke around that I would actually like to be British. I have a lot of people over here to thank 'cause this whole kind of clay court season, grass court season, I spent all my time in London. The LTA has been great to me, really kind to me to let me train with Jamie, work with Louis, other coaches. I feel a lot of support. It's fun being part of the atmosphere over here. I didn't really think about it when I first kind of agreed to play with Jamie back at the beginning of the year. It's been kind of a whirlwind lately. It's great. It's fun. Q. Yesterday you kind of expected that Jamie is going to get a lot of attention. You were surrounded as you came off court. Was that a surprise? JAMIE MURRAY: I did a pretty fast sprint. ERIC BUTORAC: You were out of there (laughter). No, I love it. When you play tennis as a little kid, you dream about playing professional tennis. That's what you think about, playing on a big court at Wimbledon, kind of being mobbed by fans afterwards, signing autographs, taking pictures. That's part of the whole picture. JAMIE MURRAY: Living the dream. ERIC BUTORAC: Yeah, of course. For me, I never expected that coming out of college, playing pro tennis, even as a doubles player. I never expected to be treated like that. I love it. Try to take it all in and enjoy every aspect of it. Q. You have a decent chance of being on a show court next time. Will that be a big deal for both of you? ERIC BUTORAC: I guess. I actually preferred our match today. I didn't like the atmosphere on Court 2 that much. They sell tickets for Court 2. By the time the fifth match comes along, two-thirds of the fans have gone home. The standing room, you can't even get yourself in there. It's jam-packed, but they won't let anyone into the seats. I think it's a poor effort by security or whatever. I think they need to change that. I understand if it's the middle of the day, they can't let the fans in there. There's hundreds of fans that can't get onto the court to watch us play. You have hundreds of open seats. 8:30 at night, surely you can open the gates and let some fans in. It was a weird atmosphere having this empty court, then this mob of fans rows 30 through 37. What's going on here? I actually preferred the atmosphere today where the fans were right up there close to you, which we didn't have yesterday. They're also kind of exploding out of the corners. Peeking around the bushes, people are like, come on, Booty. It's good. Q. Are you starting to think about semifinals, finals Centre Court? You are, aren't you? JAMIE MURRAY: I don't know. We want to take each match one match at a time. We're going to have a tough match in our next round. We're not too sure who we'll play yet. We might play the guys that were in the finals of the French Open. It's going to be a tough match. If we keep playing well, we'll give ourself as good shot to win. Obviously if you told me we're going to be in the semifinals next week, I'm happy about that, yeah. Q. Roger Draper said there were people not trying hard enough, there were individuals not trying hard enough. Do you think that's a fair criticism or unfair criticism? JAMIE MURRAY: I don't know. I guess the players know if they're pulling their weight or not. I'm doing my own thing on the doubles tour. I'm not really around there so much. The only people that I'm playing tournaments at that are British are my brother and Tim just now. Hopefully you got guys like Bogo, Bloomers, and Jamie Baker that can move up to that level. That's going to take hard work. Q. Talking to Alex, he seemed pretty hurt by the idea he wasn't trying. I guess you sympathize with that. JAMIE MURRAY: Well, yeah, if he feels like he's pulling his weight, yeah, I'd be upset if somebody told me that as well. That's up to him. I don't really see him. He doesn't really train much at Roehampton. I wouldn't know if he's working hard or not. He doesn't seem to be doing too bad for himself right now, I think. Q. John McEnroe was saying he doesn't like the fist pumping that you and a lot of other guys do these days. What do you get from it? ERIC BUTORAC: I think if you polled all the fans in the crowd, the majority of them, that's what they want to see. I think the reason people like us so much as a team, from what I've heard, is that we interact very well with the crowd. We put our names on the back of the shirt. We're not allowed to do it here at Wimbledon. It's one way for them to get to know us a little bit. Even during the match today. I feel comfortable if I miss a shot. I'm close to the crowd to say a few words to them, to chat with them. They feel like they get a little bit of personal connection. I think fans also like seeing energy, especially on the doubles court. They like seeing you excited when you win. They like seeing you kind of hurt when you lose. They want to see that it means something new, which it really does. I think teams can relate to us because when we have a tough patch like on the clay court season when we lost, we were down, it hurt us. We're out there fighting hard and training and losing. That's tough. Now when we're having success, you can see we truly enjoy being out there. Queen's, Nottingham, now here, it's been a great experience. Walking off the court, I think fans, we're approachable people. They like to come up and tell us congratulations. I think a lot of that stems from our energy, our excitement on the court. For me, I grew up -- not even grew up -- but I watched the Bryan brothers the last few years. I think they're the most exciting team in pro doubles. You can tell by the crowds that go and watch the Bryans. If you have Bjorkman and Mirnyi playing Hanley and Ullyett, the No. 2 and 3 teams in the world, you're going to have 10 people in the seats. If the Bryans play, the place is packed. Why is that? The Bryans jump around, pump their fists, get excited. In a way, we kind of try to model ourselves after them, how to handle the promotion of doubles, how to be a professional on court. End of FastScripts |
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