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MASTERS SERIES MONTE-CARLO PRESENTED BY ROLEXApril 21, 2008Andy MurrayMONTE CARLO, MONACO A. MURRAY/F. López 7-6, 6-4 THE MODERATOR: Questions for Andy. Q. Good start to a clay court season. ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, it was good. Yeah, I played good. I didn't make too many mistakes. You know, there's stuff I could have done better. I could have returned a bit better, you know, moved forward in the court a little bit better. But, you know, for the first match, you know, I spoke to Miles and Alex beforehand, and we wanted to try and, you know, run a lot, try and make as many balls as possible, and not make too many unforced errors. 'Cause, you know, it's important to be patient on the clay, and especially on your first match is tough, as well. So I'm just happy with the way I played. Q. Do you think that's the sort of core of it: to know when to attack and when to move in? I mean, you have the game for clay. Don't you feel you have the game for clay? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, the number one thing to get is the patience. You show, on the other courts it's much easier to come to the net, you know, when you're out of position to, you know, just slice, you know, you're kind of back in the point. But on the clay, if you don't hit the slice quite well enough, you can do a lot of running again. When you do have the opportunity, it's important to be aggressive. But obviously, it's harder to hit winners on clay, too. The first thing you need to work on is the patience, and I did that well today. You know, hopefully the rest of the stuff will come when I get a bit more confidence. Q. Do you think the stuff you're working on here, the development of your game, is going to be useful on all the other surfaces, as well? ANDY MURRAY: Uhm, well, no. For me, anyway, clay is a completely different surface to the other ones. I just think, uhm, you know, you serve differently on clay, you return naturally a little bit more defensive as well, and you have to play way more patient, too - from the ground, that is. You've got to play more patient. That's a completely different mindset to the other court. I just wanted to learn how to play well on the surface. And then, you know, when I do win some more matches, then I get more confidence. But I don't know how much -- yeah, maybe it helps your overall game, but I'm not going to play like I am, you know, on the clay, you know, when I go play at Queen's or Wimbledon. Q. How natural do you find your movement on clay, sliding into shots and things? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, pretty natural. That's one of the things that I normally do well on all the surfaces: I move pretty good. There's some things I can still do to improve my movement. You know, instead of sliding kind of as you make contact with the ball, kind of sliding a little bit before, so you're actually stopping pretty much when you're making contact with the ball, which therefore means you can get back into court faster. But actually moving forward to dropshots, you know, sliding out to my backhand side, obviously I practiced it a lot when I was young. So the movement's not really an issue. Q. Alex made the point yesterday to us that it's important that people don't rush, that you don't rush, that you take your time and get the game in the right position. Youngsters are notoriously impatient. Are you aware of it, that it's important you take it step by step and it's going to be a process? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah. Well, like I said at the start, the number one thing to get is the patience right on the court. I don't know if you missed it or not. But, you know, I was saying the most important thing is, you know, to find, you know, the balance between knowing when to go for your shots, when to move back, when to play aggressive on the return. You know, today I didn't play all that aggressive. But, you know, I didn't play -- I was kind of in the middle of a defense and attack. I was just trying to keep the ball high and deep, not let him come into the court too much. I don't want to rush the results; I just want to try and find the right way for me to play on clay. Q. Yesterday Alex said, in fact, the art of clay is sometimes you accept to play some bad shots, and that you were so demanding with yourself, you didn't accept that even when you were training, to accept to play some bad shots sometimes in a point, just to accept that. ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I think that's important on all of the courts. You know, on clay, though, I mean, you're obviously going to hit less mistakes because you're not gonna go for the shots as much. You know, I don't think that's the problem. You know, the thing that you don't want to get, you know, disappointed about is, you know, if you go down a break of serve, or someone plays a very good game, you know, there's always a chance to come back on clay. On the other surfaces, it's obviously difficult to get back. But, you know, if you're struggling a little bit on clay, if you run a lot, you put a lot of balls back in the court, you know you can come through some matches. Like today, like I said, I didn't think I did anything unbelievably well or special. I just played a very solid match. That was enough today. Q. And you enjoyed that? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I enjoy winning. Q. You have kind of sweet and sour memories of Volandri when you were playing some superb tennis against him last year, then it all went horribly wrong. ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I don't have any sore memories about him; I have sore memories about hurting my wrist. Yeah, I was playing great tennis that day. Hopefully when I play against him, I can do the same. It's obviously a completely different match that I won today with López, having a very big lefty serve, you know, a lot of slice on his backhand. You know, Volandri is obviously heavy topspin and just kicks his serve in. So a very different match. End of FastScripts |
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