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PILOT PEN TENNIS PRESENTED BY SCHICKAugust 21, 2008Luka GregorcNEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT L. GREGORC/A. Seppi 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. You came out of nowhere. LUKA GREGORC: That's for sure, yes. Been playing well coming into the week. So I was very confident. I started off well in the qualifying, getting through some tough matches. One thing led to the other. I'm still in. Q. We don't have a lot of information on you. Can you tell us basically your career. LUKA GREGORC: My career has been pretty interesting, bumpy I can say. Been quite a few injuries since I turned pro. It's been taking me out quite a bit. Start of this year, like most of year so far, I've been struggling with my knee. So I've been up and down, not able to practice much. Only in the past few months was I really able to start practicing properly and putting some fitness in. All the hard work is coming together now. Q. Are you a little surprised? LUKA GREGORC: I never got this far in ATP definitely. Surprised? You know, it's hard to say 'surprised' because this is what you work for your whole career. No, I'm not surprised actually. I've been working hard and I've been playing well lately. This is kind of a little payback for all the hard work. Q. What do you find to be the best part of your game? LUKA GREGORC: I definitely rely on my serve. My serve is a big part of my game. My return is also my strength. I depend a lot on it, count on it to put a guy under pressure as soon as possible. Then just from the back, I have a lot of variety in my game. I can mix it up with the slices, coming into the net, play heavy from the back. That's really a good strategy. It's been paying off so far. I'm a pretty tall guy. I have a good reach of the net. My groundstrokes are powerful enough, heavy enough to put the guy under a lot of pressure. Maybe he's not going to come up with the best shot. I'll have time to get to the net and get to the volley. Q. The second point of the 11th game, you hit it out. It was a late call. Do you know what happened there? LUKA GREGORC: Yeah, what happened was I hit the return. Linesman called it out. The chair umpire overrule it. Linesman only called it out. The chair's decision is only after Andreas hit the ball. Technically that is not considered as a let. If he calls it after you hit the ball, you already stroke the ball, so it didn't affect your shot. He made a mistake, so I got awarded the point. Q. Helps to get a little luck out there, too. LUKA GREGORC: Well, I don't want to say it's luck. It's part of the game. If you look at it like four or five times, chair umpire overruled the linesman against me running into that. It wasn't much luck there I don't think. He saw it in. Q. Through all the trials and tribulations you've had as a tennis player, have you ever thought maybe you would do something else? What has been your motivation? LUKA GREGORC: My motivation has been mostly my coach and my parents. I mean, that's been the biggest part of my motivation. They've been extremely supportive and very helpful. Q. Is your coach here? LUKA GREGORC: My coach is here. Q. What's his name? LUKA GREGORC: Marcos Ondruska. He's a former player. He was very good. Got as high as 27 in the world. They've been a big part of the motivation behind me. They've been pushing me when things got rough and ugly in my career. They've been standing behind me, never give up on me. I've had some patches in my life when I didn't know if I wanted to play tennis anymore, was asking myself if this is really going anywhere. Thanks to them I kind of stay on track and stay focused and keep work hard. This is the result of it. Q. Do your parents live in Boca? LUKA GREGORC: No, they live in Slovenia. I live in Miami. Q. What is the last time you played on stadium court? LUKA GREGORC: Here? Anywhere? A good question. Depends what tournament it was. The last time ATP must have been last year Tokyo against Hewitt. Q. Got to be a different atmosphere. LUKA GREGORC: Definitely. You have a big stadium. I'm excited. It's what I've been working for, what I've been looking for. Go out there and give my hundred percent and take it from there. End of FastScripts |
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