|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
WIMBLEDONJune 26, 2010Chris EatonDominic InglotLONDON, ENGLAND EATON-INGLOT/Nestor-Zimonjic THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Where on earth did that win come from? CHRIS EATON: You did most of it. You can take that one (smiling). DOMINIC INGLOT: I mean, that's a good question. I think we always just knew we had the kind of ability to play like this. You know, our serves are so strong that if we can keep that going throughout a match, we're always going to get some looks because we can always hold our serves and that puts pressure on the opponent. I think we really started in the last couple of days hitting our serves big. That gives us a lot of belief, especially from last round. We didn't get broken once. Faced two breakpoints in the last round. Gave us confidence today if we hold serve, take care of our serves, just be relaxed and easy on the returns, we're going to get some looks, and we did. Q. Chris, bring back any memories for you? CHRIS EATON: Yeah, a little bit. No, you know, it's always great to be here. You know, it seems to bring out the best in me, which is always nice. It's always nice to play your best tennis on the big stages. But, yeah, you know, I think we just played really solid again. Pretty much what I was saying a couple years ago, as long as we keep serving well, I think we put ourselves in a great shape to play anybody. Q. Can you tell us what's happened to you since then? CHRIS EATON: You know, I've just been trying to work on my game, you know, trying to keep working as hard as I can on the right things. You know, it's one of the those things you never know when your hard work is going to pay off or if it's going to pay off. If you keep working as hard as you can, that's all you can do. It's paying off a little bit more this week. Q. Focus more on singles or doubles? CHRIS EATON: No, I do everything. I just like tennis. Get out there and play as much as I can, try as hard as I can, singles, doubles, whatever. So, yeah, I just go for it. Q. You know the impact that Wimbledon can have on your life and your career, even if it's fleeting. CHRIS EATON: Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, it tends to get a little crazy if you do well here. It's good fun. It can have, yeah, a lot of positive impacts because you put yourself up against the best guys in the world, you really see what you've got. It's nice for us to know that we've got great performances like that. We're capable of doing great performances like that. Now I suppose we've got to work on producing that every time. Q. What were your aspirations as a partnership going into this tournament? How has that changed with this result? DOMINIC INGLOT: I mean, I think when you go into the tournament, you just want to do as best you can. And I think that sometimes it can hinder you if you set yourself certain goals in terms of certain rounds. I think the best thing to do, this is what I got out of it, maybe Chris is something different, is to go out and play your best tennis. I know that if we go out there and play our best tennis, we will win matches. Therefore, it's not a surprise to me that we can win a match like this because I know, as I said before, serving well, you'll get looks. It's very simple in that sense. So, you know, it's great that we won a match against the No. 1 team in the world. That's awesome. You know, next match, this will be the same thing. Another -- you know, tough opponents. We'll do the same thing: look after our serves, hold that, and we can win that again. We can win the next one and the next one as long as we take care of business in certain aspects and not think too far ahead about this round, that round, whatever it may be. Q. Is the crowd a help or do you have to work and not let the pressure build from it? CHRIS EATON: No, I mean, I don't think the pressure changes with how big the crowd is. You know, at the end of the day, there's a set pressure which is you're playing Wimbledon. Today there was another set pressure saying, You're playing two great tennis players. So, you know, the bigger the crowd gets, obviously that helps us a lot, obviously inspires us, helps us obviously play our best, 'cause it did bring out pretty much our best today. Yeah, you know, I think we're pretty good at sort of the only pressure that comes is from ourselves, you know. We just expect to deliver. You know, that's the pressure that we feel. You know, we know that we can deliver, so it's not a massive issue for us. DOMINIC INGLOT: I think pressure is -- like my coach back in college used to say, Pressure is a privilege. I think that's an opportunity where you can prove your best at a turbulent time, so to speak. I think I enjoy it. I think Chris does as well. Yeah, you know, some people fall at some hurdles. But it's enjoyable to do there. With a big crowd, that's great. The more pressure, the more you can actually prove yourself as a player, as a person. I think it's fun. Q. If the committee stick you on a show court as a result of this, will you enjoy that all the more? CHRIS EATON: Quite actually I'd like to be on a show court. I'd like to see how fast his serve is. We haven't been on a court with a speed gun. DOMINIC INGLOT: I don't know if that's going to help (laughter). CHRIS EATON: No. You know, I've played on a show court before. Dom has had some matches in college with some big crowds. It doesn't faze us, that sort of stuff. You know, as Dom says, all this is just great opportunities to show what we've got, go out and have a good time because this is a lot of fun. Q. How long have you been playing together as a partnership and how did the partnership get formed? DOMINIC INGLOT: I think we started in like September. CHRIS EATON: Probably been about nine months. DOMINIC INGLOT: Something like that. I mean, I actually came out of college and we played our first Futures against each other actually. Our first Future we played in the semifinals. He beat me on grass. And then the next Futures, I beat him in doubles. CHRIS EATON: There was a bad line call in that match, by the way. There actually was. I thought I can't really take any more of that, so I thought I would team up with him. I think he was putting a bit of pressure on the umpire, so I thought, you know, useful asset. DOMINIC INGLOT: Well, we played well. We thought, Why don't we actually play together? We started doing reasonably well at that level and tried to kind of progress amongst the tournaments, play a few more Challengers. It's tricky when you're concentrating on singles as well. You might not get into certain tournaments on your singles, but you do on your doubles. We were trying to figure that out. We've had some ups and downs. But who doesn't have that? Q. Whereabouts were you at college? DOMINIC INGLOT: I was at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. I mean, I guess I've been playing doubles there for a little bit. I saw like Chris, and I'm sure Chris saw that in me as well, and we thought, That could be good. So let's try it out. Q. On a scholarship? DOMINIC INGLOT: That's right, tennis scholarship, to be able to get a degree and play tennis at the same time. I loved it. It was fantastic. Q. Does that help, you got in that American winning mindset out there? DOMINIC INGLOT: I definitely think America really helped me a lot. I mean, my coach always likes to say that the best thing he did for me was toughen me up. And to be honest, I think I've got to give him some credit for that because I think it definitely teaches you, you know, in spite of anything, you've got to just tough out any match you can, do whatever you can to win no matter if you're hurt, whatever it may be, terrible crowd, bad line calls, whatever it is. So actually when you come out to these kind of situations, it's easy. All you have to do is face an opponent instead of counter something else. I mean, I really enjoyed it. I thrived in that. We did pretty well, me and my partner, in the doubles, NCAAs. I took that kind of confidence boost and kind of went, you know, when I hit the Futures level to hit the ground running. So it helped. Q. Did you have a conversation with your fellow Brits who came pretty close to doing what you just did in the first round, get any advice from them at all, handle on what might happen on the court? CHRIS EATON: Yeah, I mean, we got some tactics from Jamie and Johnny. They played a great match, as well. Yeah, but it was actually -- also we have a coach who used to coach Daniel Nestor, so that kind of helps as well. To be honest with you, it was actually nice to see that they're not ridiculous, if that makes sense. It's nice to see they can be pushed by guys we know well. I think that helped us. It helped us sort of -- obviously, they have a 1 by their name and a couple of Wimbledon championships under their belt. You can go and sort of lose a set like that (snapping fingers) purely because of who they are. I think it helped us a lot to have Jamie and Johnny push them hard so that we know -- because we practice with Jamie and Johnny. So it's nice for us to hang on. If they can push them hard, so can we. Let's get stuck in. Yeah, it was a great help. DOMINIC INGLOT: They also gave us some hints. Not only them, but Colin and Ken as well. All the British guys, they've been really helpful in that sense to give us advice, what we can expect. If you know what you're walking into, it really kind of helps you prepare, you know what to expect. So it really helped us. Q. Any one or two particular things you'd want to share? Did you expect as this was going on that the other shoe was going to drop? CHRIS EATON: No, I mean, you know, it's difficult. You expect them to make a lot of sort of clutch returns at big points, which they did. But, you know, we were also sending some big serves. You can return as well as you want, but if you don't touch the ball, it doesn't matter. When you have Dom dropping massive serves at big points, there was a breakpoint you saved with an ace, it doesn't matter who you play, that works. Yeah, I mean, you can think about these things, but at the end of the day, especially on our serves, if we sort of put our best serve against their returns, we're feeling pretty confident. DOMINIC INGLOT: For sure. I think there was a couple times, you know, as I said, big points. Kind of the belief is our goods are good enough. Our goods are better than their goods. Like if we just hit the serve the right way, we will win a point. I mean, that's ridiculous, you say, Too good, have that point. But how many times can you do that, even if you're No. 1 in the world? It really gives us confidence to see that we can do it better than some of the best guys in the world. Q. Given that you've won, and some other Brits have won, what does that say about the comment that the Brits can't play apart from Andy Murray? CHRIS EATON: You kind of get used to that, don't you? Those sort of comments are made every year. Whether they're true or not, you know, this is Wimbledon, so it's not really an easy place to win tennis matches. I mean, you know, best tournament in the world, best players in the world. You know, when you're out there, you never, ever get given matches. You have to work, you have to fight. It's never easy. So, you know, I find it tough, you know, for some of the people who have lost. They've had tough matches with good players. You know, they need to look at the positives from that as well as maybe they could have done this or that. But, yeah, you know, it's always nice to have British wins. Especially, you know, Ken and Colin, they help us sort of just lift the energy. We help them. We're near them in the changing room area. You can feel a little bit of the vibes that they're feeling. So, yeah, it definitely helps having wins on the board. But, you know, you can't always win. DOMINIC INGLOT: Hopefully we can help them now as well. If they think we can win, they can win as well. Q. Prior to this win, what were your plans for the second week of Wimbledon? Will you have to change your plans now? DOMINIC INGLOT: I think so. I actually was going to play a tournament up in Manchester starting Tuesday (laughter). Might have to withdraw from that one. Q. You can't postpone the match? DOMINIC INGLOT: No, there's no postponing. You have to have your mind on one goal, and that's this right now. Whatever happens, I can't be focusing on that. This is the main focus right now. Just have to go out there and do the best and forget about that. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|