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MONTE-CARLO ROLEX MASTERSApril 19, 2012Andy MurrayMONTE CARLO, MONACO A. MURRAY/J. Benneteau THE MODERATOR: Questions for Andy, please. Q. Is it the first time that two brothers played two twins? ANDY MURRAY: No. We've played before. Q. What happened the other time? ANDY MURRAY: They won. They won the last time, as well. Q. You said a couple of times that the court surface is a little uneven out there. Could you elaborate on that a little perhaps. ANDY MURRAY: I mean, it's pretty self‑explanatory. The court, yeah, in parts, it's not flat. Normally the courts here are fantastic. You know, they said they had a few problems with it during the Davis Cup, but they changed it. But, yeah, I mean, clay courts usually take a while, if you make changes to them, before they've kind of settled. That's probably why there were a few bad bounces and guys are kind of struggling with the movement a little bit. Q. It was a close match up until that point. Were you enjoying the challenge? ANDY MURRAY: Well, I mean, I don't know whether 'enjoying it' is the right word. It was a tough match, a lot of long games especially, quite a few long rallies. It was very cool conditions today in comparison to the other day, so the court was playing a bit slower. Yeah, it was a tough match. He was playing well. He was going for his shots and making it tough. Q. What's the problem you have with your left hand? ANDY MURRAY: It's a blister. Q. Did you see exactly what he did when he rolled his ankle? ANDY MURRAY: No. You're watching the ball. He obviously did it after he made contact with the ball. I'm following the ball. Then obviously, I mean, I heard the noise he made. It wasn't going to be good. Q. Didn't have to go through the horror of seeing it up close? ANDY MURRAY: The TV did a good job of playing about a hundred replays after those things happen, which I think they should maybe not. It's not that nice to watch, I don't think, for anyone. But, yeah, I mean, it's been on the TV quite a few times. It looked like quite a bad one. Also his wrist, he fell quite heavily onto. Good thing it wasn't his left wrist. He's had a lot of problems with that the last couple years. So hopefully it's not too bad. Q. Are you surprised he even tried to go on? ANDY MURRAY: No, because you always have to see how things feel. I had the same thing at the French Open last year. I thought there was no chance I was going to be able to play. Managed to get through that match and started to feel a little bit better. With something like that, often the shock of actually doing it and falling down is worse than, you know, how bad the injury can be. So hopefully for him it's not six, seven weeks, you know, it's just a couple weeks. Q. A few words on Berdych, your next opponent. ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, tough. He plays a different style of tennis on the clay, as well. A lot of the guys sort of work the points quite a lot, play with more topspin and stuff. He has so much power, he's able to go through the court, hit pretty flat. It's quite a different game he plays compared with a lot of the top players on the clay. Plays a lot flatter. Q. I don't know if you saw it, but Nishikori had a chance to be a break up, serving for the match. Does that surprise you? ANDY MURRAY: No. Nishikori likes the clay. He has a good game for it. He moves well. He slides into the ball naturally. He has a good backhand cross‑court, and he likes to run around his backhand to hit a forehand. Normally that's a pretty good start on the clay. He's getting older. He's getting more experience. It doesn't surprise me much. He's a very, very good player. He's not too far away from getting into the top 10 I would have thought. Q. What's the key to playing Tomas? ANDY MURRAY: Sometimes the match is kind of on his racquet a little bit because he has so much power. But also, you know, if you can keep the ball to a good length, get him moving, which isn't the easiest thing to do, but if you can do that, that's where he's not so comfortable. So that's what you need to try and do against him. Q. On the doubles, would you have any plans to play with Jamie again during the clay court season? ANDY MURRAY: I'm playing with him next week in Barcelona, as well, yeah. Q. Can you explain how you feel with your brother? ANDY MURRAY: Well, it was obviously great that we get the chance to play in these tournaments together. Yeah, I mean, I hate losing any doubles match with him. It's very tough. Today, even though the singles went well, I'm very disappointed we lost the doubles. We played pretty good, had a lot of chances. We played well in the first round, too. It's nice to play with him, and it feels great when you win. Also, when you lose, it's tough, as well. Q. These kinds of games, does it help you for other matches? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I think in certain tournaments and circumstances it helps to play doubles. Sometimes it can seem a good idea at the start of the week. If you have a really good week in the singles and the doubles, it's tough to do both nowadays. But, yeah, it does help for the first week on clay to get more time on the surface, more time just feeling how the court plays, 'cause it's very different to the other courts. Q. You've had quite a few people getting injured against you or pulling out now. Do you think it's all part of your intimidating personality? ANDY MURRAY: No, yeah, it's been tough. I've had this year probably more. Kukushkin stopped against me in Australia, today, then a couple times last week. I mean, four in the first four months or something, probably haven't even had that much‑‑ only had that many in my career maybe. I'm not sure. But, yeah, surprising. It's different when someone doesn't go on the court. It's tough when someone injuries themselves badly in front of you. It's not ideal. Q. Did you say you heard something when he turned his ankle? ANDY MURRAY: Him. I heard him, obviously, when he went down. He was making quite a lot of noise. Yeah, that's the thing. It happens all the time. You see people turn their ankle, they make a lot of noise because the shock of it is quite scary (snapping fingers). You can see sometimes people have really damaged themselves by going down on your ankle and you never know how bad it is. You're kind of quite shocked. When I went over, his ankle, his knee, was kind of shaking quite a lot because he's so nervous about what maybe he's done. Normally when you wake up the next day you can tell how bad it's going to be. Q. Did you notice that the young kids who are supposed to replace the Fab Four, as they call you, are not doing that well? If you look at Harrison, Gulbis, others, none of them seem to be closing the gap. Do you think it will be difficult that something will change quickly enough or not? ANDY MURRAY: I don't think it's going to change quickly. I hope for my sake it doesn't change quickly. But I think tennis changed a lot the last five, six years. I think like when I came on the tour, like physically I wasn't great. Kind of understood quickly that was something that was very important. I think the guys, if you look at their peak years, when guys are playing their best tennis, it's not really early 20s anymore. It tends to be I think a bit later in their careers. If you look at the age of the guys in the top 10, you have Tsonga, he's going to be 27 this year. Fish is much older. Isner I think is 27 this year. Roger is in his 30s. Ferrer, late 20s. It's tough. The game is so physical now. That's why it's taking longer for guys to break through. They will, you know, eventually, but it's not going to happen kind of at 18, 19 like it was a few years ago. And I think in some ways that's a credit to how good some of the players have been from such a young age. I mean, Rafa was winning matches here when he was like 15 years old. Very, very difficult thing to do. He did that because he's special. He's one of the best players of all time. And Roger, the same. They were winning at a young age because they're special. You don't see guys like them coming around every couple of years. It takes a good amount of time before you'll see a couple of guys like that again. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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