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WIMBLEDONJune 25, 2010Andy RoddickLONDON, ENGLAND A. RODDICK/P. Kohlschreiber THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. John... ANDY RODDICK: I want to make you ask a question about my match first. Any one you want. Q. How was the match? ANDY RODDICK: It was good (smiling). Go. Q. John was complimentary in how you helped him. I'm wondering, what did it mean the way he played, what did it mean to you, to American tennis? ANDY RODDICK: Well, I think that match went past what country you're from. It was kind of like this global event. I mean, it was ridiculous. I mean, you don't get past 20. And to get to 70, I mean, it's never, ever gonna come close to happening again. Like normally records in sports you say, you know, Okay, eventually it will be broken. That will never be broken, ever, ever, not even close. Q. John mentioned that you helped him out Wednesday night with some food. I'm wondering how that came about. Were you around here and watching some, checked on him? You came back here? ANDY RODDICK: No, I was watching. Went to dinner. John's best friend is my assistant with my foundation back home. She was texting us, you know, every point what was going on. You know, basically got to 35-All. Basically, it's, Okay, we settle in, eat in, which I do every single night before I play a match. I was on a run of about five straight nights of not leaving the house. I was like, I've got to get out of the house. So we were getting updates, update, updates. Then it came back. It finally got called. We were sitting there seven-and-a-half hours. I'm staying close by. I said, Let's at least go over there and see if we can do anything. We offered Doug's help, Georgia who is here, helps with massage. He didn't want to eat this stuff seven-and-a-half hours later. We just went and grabbed him some food that he could actually kind of refuel his body with. I didn't have to play the next day. You know, so it wasn't a big effort by me. My team was really good about wanting to help John. I thought that was pretty cool of them. Q. Today's match you looked particularly relieved at the end. Was that really the case? ANDY RODDICK: Well, yeah. I mean, you're always relieved. Kohlschreiber, I think I had one of the tougher second-round draws. For the slotted seeds that I could have played, 25 to 32, he might be the most dangerous one there. Obviously I'd lost to him in a slam before. He comes to play at slams. So, yeah, I mean, I knew it was going to be tough. I was relieved to have gotten through. Q. You seemed to pick up your game in the third and fourth sets. Talk about that uptake. ANDY RODDICK: I got a little bit more aggressive. I started hitting my forehand return well, and that was the difference. You know, I started sticking that return. Then all of a sudden, even if I wasn't breaking, I was 30-All every game. You put yourself in a position at 30-All every game, you're making returns, uhm, you know, you don't have to just convert that one time. You're going to have opportunities to make him come up with the goods. In the third and the fourth set, I felt like I did that pretty well. Q. What was your internal dialogue like during the changeover after letting that second set get away? ANDY RODDICK: I went to the bathroom, so I didn't actually have a changeover. I walked out. No, I mean, after a tiebreaker, when the difference is one set all, two sets to love, that's pretty high intensity. The crowd gets really into it. But there's always a lull after that where, you know, someone can kind of take momentum back. It definitely dies down a little bit. He played a bad game. I was aware of that opportunity. I've done a good job of not saying a word out there this whole tournament, just going about my business the right way, you know, so I just tried to play the next point. Q. How do you approach the two days off? Are you happy about that extra day's rest or would you rather keep it one day off and back to action? ANDY RODDICK: Either way, I'm not too bothered. You know, I feel like, you know, you play three matches in a slam, it's a pretty good workload regardless. So I don't feel like I'm going to be short of practice or match play come Monday. Might even get to go into the city for dinner tomorrow night, so that might be nice. Q. Which ticket do you pick, Super Saturday at the US Open or Super Monday here? ANDY RODDICK: Oh, man, that's tough. Q. What are the pros and cons? ANDY RODDICK: You mean to play? Q. No, as a fan. ANDY RODDICK: To spectate? Q. Yes. ANDY RODDICK: I mean, maybe Monday just because there's more matches. You can see more players. Purely on the basis of numbers, I think. I think that's probably what I'd base it on. Q. How was acting in American Pie? ANDY RODDICK: It was good. It was awesome. Q. Are you serving now about as well as you can? Did you feel out there like you were sort of in that rhythm of having your serve be at its best? ANDY RODDICK: Yeah, the numbers don't lie, I guess. I had 28 aces, no doubles, served over 70%. So, uhm, that's good. To not get broken against him, I mean, he jumps on returns, especially second-serve returns. He takes pretty good cuts and can land them in. To get through, whatever it is, whether it's a serve or the rest of the game, I'm getting through service games well right now. So I hope I can continue that. Q. The English soccer team have a ban placed on their wives and girlfriends staying at the same hotel as them. In tennis, the wives play a huge part of the team. How important is the support of your wife at a tournament like this? ANDY RODDICK: I mean, it's different. It's a team event versus an individual event. Having a person there is great. Having 25 wives, you know, having to account, that's 25 more meals, that's 25 more things that the team has to kind of worry about. I don't know if this is a wives/girlfriend issue or a numbers issue that we're dealing with. Personally, I obviously love having Brooke here. Q. Who do you think would win a WAG-off between the tennis WAGS and the soccer wags? ANDY RODDICK: That just sounds dirty. You just said 'WAG-off.' I'm not going to answer that. Q. That match obliterated every longevity record. Why did that last so long? ANDY RODDICK: It's a combination of things. I mean, obviously it's a fluke-ish thing. Everything had to go the right direction. I mean, you have two guys who were serving great, not returning that well. One thing, they were playing really good tennis, but they weren't consistently putting enough returns in the court to make someone feel the pressure. They were both serving from ahead the whole time. Seemed that entire fifth set, they had a 15-Love, 30-15 lead. That's a lot easier to serve from than if you're Love-15 down and all of a sudden hitting a second serve. It makes it a little more, you know, urgent. But even with all that, it should never, ever go to what it did. I mean, everything has to go either the right or the wrong way, depending on how you're looking at it. You guys are probably thinking the right way. When you're out there, you're probably thinking the wrong way. Yeah, there's no logical explanation for 70 to 68. Q. Did you know John had that in him spiritually as well as physically? ANDY RODDICK: He's a good competitor. You see a big guy, you see a guy 6'9". You like to put the competitor thing on someone who's little and scrappy. They normally get the benefit of kind of the scrapper title a little bit easier. But he always competes. He always competes. He is a great pressure server. You know, that's why his tiebreak record has been great throughout his career. You know, he's pretty relaxed. You know, in a big moment, he doesn't play worse. You know, I'm not that surprised by it. I don't know that I would have said he could go eight hours in one day, but he did. Q. US Open match flash through your head at all? ANDY RODDICK: No. I mean, it's so -- for a different reason. Like all the reasons I mentioned before, he served well at big moments. You know, he adds 15 miles an hour on his second serve and it seems like it doesn't really affect his percentages at all. You know, but that was a different match. 7-6 in the fifth, you can't really compare it to 70 to 68 in the fifth. Q. If you didn't have to play a tiebreaker, you might have been there a while. ANDY RODDICK: It will never happen again. No one has even gotten to 30. Q. 16-14 was epic. ANDY RODDICK: You just ruined my final from last year. Never even come close. Never to 50 again. Never to 40 again. Q. More generally, pretty wild first week if you're a spectator or one of us. ANDY RODDICK: Sure. Q. How much does that seep into the locker room? How much do you get a sense of the vibe? ANDY RODDICK: No, we were talking about it in our house yesterday from the first match out of the gate with Roger being up against it, you know, to the Isner-Mahut trilogy, to the Queen coming, to Rafa in five. If you guys are struggling for story lines, you need to get a different job fast. Q. Wimbledon seems to be on steroids recently with the final with Federer and Nadal, then your final, and then Isner. Those are three of the most memorable matches in tennis history in a pretty close cluster. ANDY RODDICK: Yeah. Again, it's one of those things that I feel, you know, is a small percentage of good things, and then a large percentage of fortunate coincidences. It's on a good run, and I'm glad that stuff is happening here. You know, it's the Mecca of our sport. So, you know, that only adds to the spectacle and the drama of everything that takes place inside of these grounds. Q. A view on changing the final-set rule in terms of a tiebreak? ANDY RODDICK: I'm torn. I can definitely understand both ways. The only reason why I would say, you know, Put a cap at 10-all or 12-all, put a breaker there, is maybe just because of what you saw today from John. I mean, you can't go any longer. It's not a conditioning issue. No one can play 11 hours and then come back and go straight into an event again where you're playing three out of five sets. So from that angle, you know, it would make sense. But then, you know, all the matches you're talking about -- in fairness to players, they should probably put a cap, but as far as general interest and drama and everything, they probably shouldn't. I'm torn like probably everyone else is. Q. He was so worn out, obviously. I guess no one was really surprised what happened today after the three days. ANDY RODDICK: I'm going to tell you guys this because he probably wouldn't: his toes were just torched. I mean, they looked like deli meat. They're disgusting. I don't know if it was from playing that long or doing whatever. They were shredded. I don't know how he could have looked, and then throw in serving for that long. It's not surprising that he couldn't go out there. I mean, credit to him, he knew he didn't have his best stuff. He was finished. I thought that was a classy move. He could have easily not given the guy the opportunity. We've seen enough guys down two sets and 4-1 and bag it. He probably knew, down two sets, he knew he didn't have enough in him. But to go through it, I thought that was a pretty classy thing of him to do. Q. Do you think all the drama from the last week is just a credit to the players and shows how much Wimbledon means to all the tennis players? ANDY RODDICK: Well, sure. Again, I don't think there's a reason. I think there's a lot of reasons and a lot of weird things that have made up this week at Wimbledon, the last couple years at Wimbledon. But it's no secret to know how much the players respect and enjoy playing in this event. Q. You mentioned there was a sense of relief getting through today. With a couple days off, what kind of mental reset do you undertake on Monday? ANDY RODDICK: Well, same thing you always do. Tomorrow will be probably be very relaxed. Kind of hit a little bit. You know, like I said, enjoy a night in town, actually getting out of the house. Then you kind of reset on Sunday and start kind of maybe working your way towards what you're going to try to do on Monday. It kind of gives you that day of maybe a little bit of downtime. Even slams on days off, you're still in your mode, still trying to get ready for the next one. I guess this scenario gives a little bit of a relief. Q. Putting aside the history and the freakishness of that match, what do you think of the aesthetics of that match? ANDY RODDICK: Aesthetics as far as what? Q. How they were playing? ANDY RODDICK: How they were playing? I told you, great serving, unbelievable pressure serving. You know, the aces count was unbelievable. You know, I mean, let's call a spade a spade. If you don't break someone in 68 games, you're not returning well. That's just fact, you know, and they would have to tell you the same thing. Once they got into the points, I thought they were playing great. I thought Mahut was hitting the ball well. I thought John was hitting the ball pretty well. But there was a lot of clutch serving. It was a combination of great serving and probably not the best returning. Q. Do you think with John's game he can get to slam finals with that power game that he has now? ANDY RODDICK: Well, he got to get to a slam quarter before you get to a slam final. Let's give him a little bit of time. But, I mean, obviously with that serve, I mean, on a given day, he could beat anyone. You know, you can't put a tangible thing on a serve like that. It's just something that he has on a daily basis that's a huge advantage. Q. Are you planning your day around the World Cup tomorrow? Planning to watch the U.S.? ANDY RODDICK: Yes, I will watch, for sure. Q. How come you were so sort of even and placid about Nebraska leaving the PAC-12? ANDY RODDICK: No, they left the Big 12, which has 10 teams to go to the Big Ten which has 12 teams. I don't know. I feel like when they did the divisions, north and south, we stopped playing Oklahoma every year, it sort of diminished the rivalry a little bit. So if I had to leave to go to somewhere, you want to go to a place that has storied programs like Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Indiana. Those are serious schools with tradition. Selfishly, my in-laws are either hardcore Ohio State fans or Michigan fans. It's on. End of FastScripts |
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