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MONTE-CARLO ROLEX MASTERS

April 12, 2010

Richard Gasquet

MONTE CARLO, MONACO

R. GASQUET/D. Gimeno-Traver
6-2, 4-6, 6-2

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please, in French.

Q. After a second difficult set, what do you feel?
RICHARD GASQUET: Well, a victory. I had a downswing. It would have cost me dearly. The beginning of the third set was not good.
The good thing was that the three first were good, and then I managed to finish well. But I did have that downswing, and it could have cost me a lot.

Q. How did you explain this downswing?
RICHARD GASQUET: Well, I got excited. I went to the net quickly. I was a bit excited in my head.

Q. Did you want to be aggressive?
RICHARD GASQUET: Yes, I had 10,000 things in my head. I could not manage to be consistent. But I'm very happy to have won. I know that I made a few mistakes. I was sometimes far from the line. But I'm very happy to have won. That's the main, important thing.

Q. This Monte-Carlo tournament, is it special for you?
RICHARD GASQUET: Yes, of course. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. Indian Wells and Miami are tournaments that are not that special to me. But here, it's close to home. It's a place where I like to win.

Q. Novak said this morning that he would stop with Martin and that he would keep Vajda and he didn't want to have two different lines with two different coaches. How do you deal with Eric and Gabriel?
RICHARD GASQUET: Things are going smoothly. I'm happy. They don't come very often. But for the moment, I'm happy. There's no concern. The losing does not come from that. Sometimes I don't play very well. But if I lose, it doesn't come from having two coaches and two different ways of playing.

Q. Are there different directions sometimes?
RICHARD GASQUET: No, no. They get along well together.

Q. Who defines the rules?
RICHARD GASQUET: With Eric every week. I consider him as someone very close to me. It's important for him to be close to me, to be with me sometimes. But I have no problems with them. It's up to me. If I lose, it's not their fault because I'm the one on the court.

Q. Do you think it can work?
RICHARD GASQUET: Yes, I think so. Yes, no problem. No concern about that.

Q. What is new with the second coach?
RICHARD GASQUET: No, it's not something new. You know, in tennis, you don't need to be very intelligent to play tennis. You just need to practice hard, to have confidence. You don't need to come from a first league university.
Physically you have to go and practice. I need to practice hard, to play match after match. Sometimes I feel not very well physically, and I feel I could be better.

Q. What does Gabriel bring to your game?
RICHARD GASQUET: Well, we practice together. He's a good coach. I feel good with him. Everything's going smoothly with him.

Q. Do you think that Gabriel is the coach and Eric is more support?
RICHARD GASQUET: No, both. I went with Eric on my own last week. No, they are both coaches. Well, of course, the breakpoints, and I am missing my backhand, these are the ones that I do. It's not the coaches that actually play them. It's not them who makes a fault. It's me in the court.

Q. When you say you couldn't continue with Eric alone a whole year...
RICHARD GASQUET: I think that Eric today is happy with his life in Paris. I'm happy to have him here sometimes, but also to have another kind of play with Gabriel, but I don't want him to come with me every week. You need to be quite young to leave every week.

Q. So you're saying he is too old (laughter)?
RICHARD GASQUET: No. But he also deserves to stay peacefully in Paris.

Q. Your ranking in the ATP is a consequence of what happened at the time.
RICHARD GASQUET: I thought I actually would go lower when I stopped. You never know to which level you can reach, how low you can go. I didn't go that low actually. Somewhere around 60. I'm not in the top 10 in the world, but I have gone much lower.
But I'm happy to play, to be on the court, and then I'll try to improve.

Q. What about Berdych?
RICHARD GASQUET: He is the favorite. He played well in Miami. I will try to play a good match and to improve. It's not that bad. With matches, you can actually improve from one day to another. Anything can happen.

Q. So before you were stronger.
RICHARD GASQUET: Yeah, I was stronger. The rhythm is lacking. I need to do the right things at the right moment. It's not a surprise for everyone what I did in Tokyo, but it will come back, it needs time.

Q. If we had Gasquet when he was young, and we would tell him what he would go through, would you have continued?
RICHARD GASQUET: I wouldn't have changed my life for anything in the world. Even if it wasn't very hard, I wouldn't change anything. There are lives harder than a tennis player. We are not working in a factory. There are more difficult things in life.
Of course, it's quite a path. If I had known, maybe I wouldn't have done it. But, you know, normally one would say it's easier to win the four Grand Slam tournaments rather than going through what I went through.

End of FastScripts

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