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WESTERN & SOUTHERN OPEN

August 19, 2011

Andy Murray

CINCINNATI, OHIO

A. MURRAY/G. Simon
6-3, 6-3

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. There were quite a lot of long rallies in that match. Was that a tactic, or is it just the way it the game panned out?
ANDY MURRAY: It's always the same playing him. I've never seen a match of his where he doesn't have long rallies. You need to be very patient against him. He moves great. He's one of the best movers on the tour.
He kind of tries to get you to overpress and get you to go for winners early in the rally, and, you know, did a pretty good job of staying patient in the rallies, mixing it up, and use my slice wall. Once I managed to push him further behind the baseline, my dropshots worked well, too.

Q. You were coming in behind his second serve quite well, too.
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I thought I returned well today. You know, he had had a very long match yesterday as well, so if I could get myself sort of ahead in the rallies and keep him moving that was going to help.
Especially early on in the match managed to have quite a lot of long rallies. Especially on his serve I made it very difficult for him to get free points.
I was happy with that.

Q. A lot of guys are saying the courts are playing slower, even some of the women are saying it's medium speed. What's your take on the speed of the courts?
ANDY MURRAY: They're very fast, for sure. Very fast. No chance these courts are slower than they were last year. No way.

Q. There is a trend from Cincinnati that you always play during the day. Last year we always talked about you played during the day. It was very hot lost year and the year before. Are you requesting the day matches or how does that...
ANDY MURRAY: No, actually last year I requested the other way round because I played -- like in the buildup I played in Toronto, I played five matches, every one of them right in the heat of the day.
Then I came here and played my first two matches right in the middle of the day. I asked before the quarterfinals, Can you please put me on a little bit later? It's not fair, because the other guys that are playing a lot of matches are playing night matches when it's cooler.
You know, I played the whole way through in Toronto and, you know, kept still getting put early and right in the heat of the day.
Then, yeah, this year it's kind of always the same because of the TV back home. I don't mind playing in the day, but it's when it's every single day it kind of adds up.
I'm sure I'll play early again tomorrow.

Q. Andy, tomorrow you could play against Mardy Fish who is up a set and a break. What you do think about his sudden rise through the game and playing him?
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, he's played his best tennis the last year or so. You know, if you look at his game, it hasn't changed, again, a whole lot. It's just confidence of winning matches and understanding how to play his game most effectively.
He's in good shape. Yeah, that definitely helps. Yeah, he's been very, very consistent, which maybe he wasn't in the past. That's why his ranking has gone from being in the 20s to 7 or 8 in the world.

Q. After your semifinal loss at Wimbledon to Nadal, and I know you've also said it a couple other times since then, you said you needed to improve your game 10% to 15% to be able to beat people like Nadal and Djokovic and Federer. Since then, what specific aspects of your game have you worked on to get that additional percentage?
ANDY MURRAY: Pretty much everything. I think if you can improve each part of your game by 1% or 2% that, makes a big difference. It adds up. So it's not one thing in particular I've been working on. Just trying to practice every single shot, get better.
If you can get stronger physically as well, that helps and can make you more consistent and quicker on the court.
But, yeah, I'm not trying to sort of mimic any other players. Like I want to have a better serve to compete with this guy or better backhand to compete with this guy. Just got to keep working and it'll come.

Q. We were talking about your diet before you came in. Tell us what the green foods are that you do eat.
ANDY MURRAY: Well, I mean, pretty much any meats, fish, rice, vegetables. The only stuff I'm not eating now is pretty much wheat. Anything that's got corn in it, which is actually a lot of like snacks and stuff like biscuits, those sorts of things.
It's tough to find stuff that doesn't have corn in it. Yeah, milk, cow's milk even. Having like soy milk instead.

Q. Has that been tough? Are you those things you like?
ANDY MURRAY: No, I haven't found it that different. You just need to make sure you have enough snacks that you can have. That's the one thing. And you have to eat enough protein and have enough meat.
Before I would have a lot of protein shakes and a lot of protein bars, supplements after I finish playing and practicing. Now I can't have any of them because they've got all the bad stuff in it.
So that's what's been difficult, getting the right amount of food on board. But it's not too bad.

Q. You're an adidas player. Can you elaborate a little bit on the benefit you have from Darren Cahill Gil Reyes and maybe even Agassi?
ANDY MURRAY: I haven't spent much time with Gil or Agassi. I spent more time obviously with Darren and Sven, you know, Groeneveld. Spent quite a lot of time with him over the clay court and grass court stretch.
It's just good, because if you look at a lot of guys now, people always go, Oh, he's got a big team or two coaches isn't right. But, you know, Rafa has had two coaches for pretty much the whole of his career; Roger is now doing the same thing; obviously I've been doing the same thing for quite a while now.
I think it works well, because you've got someone like Danny who I've known for long time and is a very good friend of mine. It helps when you're traveling the world to have someone like that around.
He's obviously not that experienced but has good knowledge of tennis, and I can use Sven and Darren when they're available to give that extra bit of experience. It's worked well.

Q. I know you obviously compete for a living. I saw something about you competing at some nonmatch time here in like a world search contest. Does that go into your regular competitive spirit, things like that?
ANDY MURRAY: No, I mean, among friends, yeah, we have quite a lot of banter and chat about it. Yeah, we always try and compete with each other at most things.
I get very competitive, especially if I'm doing something that I think I'm good at and I'm losing, I don't really like it. I don't mind being bad at something. I don't get as competitive then. But if I think I'm quite good at it, I don't like losing.

Q. The world search thing was against two people who English wasn't their first language, right?
ANDY MURRAY: Wasn't there first language, but also the world search isn't always English.

Q. Oh.
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, like sometimes it's Argentinian football teams, for example. Yeah, sometimes it's like cities around the world that are in their whatever, national language or spelling.
So that's not a huge advantage.

Q. Just changing gears, you Tweeted some lyrics to a Pink song the other day.
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah.

Q. Are you a huge Pink fan?
ANDY MURRAY: Not a huge fan, but like some of her songs.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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