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AUSTRALIAN OPENJanuary 26, 2013Mike BryanBob BryanMELBOURNE, VICTORIA BRYAN‑BRYAN/Haase‑Sijsling THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Beating Newk and Roche for the most Grand Slams, is that something important to you? MIKE BRYAN: Obviously, it feels real good to have that record. To be a part of history is pretty special. We weren't thinking about it much out there, but now that we have it, it's going to be fun to look back on our career and say we have the most Grand Slams. It's a big record, so we're pretty excited about it. Q. What is left to tick off at this point? BOB BRYAN: As far as records, there's not much. But like we've told you before, we're competitors. We hate to lose. We want to finish No.1. That's just the way‑‑ I don't know. That's just the way we are. We set goals to get better, to improve, and to play well at these big tournaments. That's why we'll be out here for the next few, three, four more years. Q. Have you set new numerical goals? MIKE BRYAN: Probably try to shoot for a hundred and cut it. BOB BRYAN: That would be cool to end on a round number. MIKE BRYAN: Has anybody ever ended on a round number like that? BOB BRYAN: Zero or a hundred? (Laughter.) Q. Why do you think you've been so successful? MIKE BRYAN: I mean, just sticking together forever. You know, when we lose, we go back to the same place and work on what we need to do together to get better. I think we're so successful at this tournament because we spent the off‑season mainly in the same spot working toward the new year. We come into these tournaments with momentum. Most teams, they fly off to different countries. But we're always pretty much thinking, eating, breathing doubles. We've just always had the drive to keep improving over time. BOB BRYAN: I also think we never really point fingers in tough situations. Everyone has their slumps. We usually say how we feel right away. We clear the air. Those feelings never really linger, so we're able to bounce back pretty quick after a tough week. Some teams will go to separate cities and talk a little smack about their partners and it might turn into something bigger. Q. Are you can sure you can get both of Michaela's feet into the trophy? BOB BRYAN: She's pretty small, but her butt is getting pretty huge. Might sit her on there and it might just tip over. We'll see. She's coming in here pretty soon. She goes to bed at 9:00 and you can't wake her up until about 8:00 a.m., so we'll check her out. Q. She'll tweet about this tomorrow? BOB BRYAN: Maybe pretty soon. 45 minutes. Q. At what point in your career, pro career, did you know you could possibly be this good? MIKE BRYAN: We never really think we're that good. I mean, we've put our head down every day. We just don't let each other slack off. If one guy is playing a little worse, the other guy is on him. We just don't let our level drop. We just let you guys talk about how good we are. We don't really go, We're amazing. We don't go home and talk about our records. It's fun to look at our trophies once in a while, but we're always just trying to push the bar a little higher and get better. Q. Where do you have all those trophies? MIKE BRYAN: They're split. I've got some in [] cam ridiculous low, and Bob has a nice trophy case in Sunny Aisles. BOB BRYAN: Yeah, I have my slams and No.1's and gold medals in Miami. My wife bought me a trophy case. It's in the guest bedroom. MIKE BRYAN: I actually brought the gold medal here to Australia because I was so scared. I didn't want to leave it home. I brought it and have it in the safe at the hotel. Bring it everywhere. Q. You don't still bring it to the court like at the US Open? MIKE BRYAN: I did that for a few months, and then players got tired find seeing it in the locker room, flashing it everywhere. Q. Australian is like six of the 13 now. Any reason for that? MIKE BRYAN: Hard court. I think we're basically hard court guys. I mean, we grew up in California. We've won six of these, four of the Open, only three at Wimbledon and the French. We always say we're clay court guys. As we look back on our careers as a whole, I think we play our best on the quick surfaces. BOB BRYAN: Yeah. I also think it's coming down here fresh, spending the off‑season together, training hard, feeling like we put in the work, having a clean outlook, always wanting to start the year on top, kind of show the other guys that we're still here, you know. So that always adds to our kind of intensity down here. Q. After you won Roland Garros, did you think you were clay guys? BOB BRYAN: We have greater results on clay. We've never lost a Davis Cup match on clay. We've made the quarters, semis, final of the French maybe like 10, 11, 12 times. It's gotten sticky the last 10 years. But I still feel like we can knock that one down another time. What do you think? MIKE BRYAN: Yeah. Q. Are there any other big milestones or is this the last one? MIKE BRYAN: It would be nice to win another Davis Cup, to have a couple of those once we retire. You know, we're really focusing on that. I think we play our next match in five or six days. Yeah, we're really excited about Davis Cup. We have a great draw this year. As Bob said, just always trying to finish the year No.1. We're looking long‑term to Rio, but really taking one year at a time and play this year as hard as we can. We're not skipping any tournaments. We're not playing a lighter schedule. We're packing it full, thanks to our agent. But, yeah, we're playing the densest schedule you can play. We're playing San Jose, Memphis, Delray, all the American tournaments. BOB BRYAN: Indian Wells, Miami, Houston. MIKE BRYAN: We have a week off after Davis Cup, but after that it's all the way through till Barcelona. Q. So the operative question is, how do you keep your enthusiasm up after all these years playing a full schedule? It can't be that easy? MIKE BRYAN: One twin has to manufacture and pull the other twin along. A lot of sugar before the matches. BOB BRYAN: Sure. MIKE BRYAN: Yeah, we just don't let the other guy slip. I mean, you see us, we're always moving our feet. Sometimes we're faking it. Sometimes we really don't have it in us, but we're just bouncing around trying to show the other guys we're bringing energy. You know, we're still excited to play big matches like this, Davis Cup matches, all that. So we really get up for these type of matches. Q. How are you going to manage that many tournaments at this point in your career? BOB BRYAN: It is a lot. Yeah, we'll taper, practice harder some weeks than others, try to peak for the bigger ones. But we're not going to go out there and tank a match. You know, we go out there as the No.1 team in the world and we want to put on a good show. Some people are seeing us for the first time, and we want to keep the level and the quality everywhere we go. We'll see how it goes. Q. Obviously there's probably more tournaments in the U.S. than any other country. Do you have an obligation to be at every U.S. tournament on some level? MIKE BRYAN: Pretty much. We like to play in the U.S. That's where we have most of our fans, most of our support. So we love going to places like Houston, River Oaks, playing up near Stanford at San Jose, Memphis, Delray. Yeah, we pretty much try to hit every U.S. spot. We're playing at Atlanta this year for the first time, hitting D.C. Yeah, we don't feel obligated, but it's just where we get the most satisfaction out of playing. Q. Do you feel like you've advanced the game of doubles technically or strategically at all? There's a lot of synchronisity going on when you're playing. MIKE BRYAN: Yeah, I think the level of doubles has gotten a lot better over the years. The singles guys bring the heat off the ground. You know, I think we play a certain style where we get all over the net, serve big, really close and fill the middle. I see a lot of the teams doing that more often. This was kind of a weird tournament. We played all stay‑back teams until the finals. This was the first serve‑and‑volley team we played. It's just pretty diverse out there. BOB BRYAN: I feel like the power has gone up a lot in the last 10 years. Guys are a little bit tougher to break now with the new racquets and the strings. These guys were serving bombs. Two or three games we got 'em, but other than that they were dropping aces left and right and holding pretty comfortably. But, like Mike said, we just try to make the holes as small as possible, make it as uncomfortable for these guys to play, make them hit shots they don't want to hit, and just kind of try to be a wall at net and make guys sweat a little bit. Q. Do you realize you had zero unforced errors until the second to last game of the match? BOB BRYAN: I missed that point, yeah (smiling). MIKE BRYAN: It's crazy, yeah. Pretty good. I mean, you miss a lot of balls, but they're all forced errors. I missed a forehand wide. Was that forced when they hit a good volley? BOB BRYAN: I don't know. MIKE BRYAN: That was unforced. It was forced? Q. As far as I remember. MIKE BRYAN: Pretty generous, the stats guys. Q. How long is the turnaround going to be to get to Jacksonville? BOB BRYAN: I go to Auckland, to L.A., drop the family off in Miami, spend the night with them, pick up some shoes. I have no shoes on right now. Go up to Jacksonville on Monday morning. Practice an hour later. There's only one indoor court up there. There's no practice courts. We're going to be spending some long days on that court. Q. Do you play barefoot? BOB BRYAN: I have some running shoes. Q. What happened in mixed? I saw you pulled out of that? MIKE BRYAN: Yeah, I was battling kind of a stiff back. This is actually the best I felt. I had a rough 10, 11 days with some spasms. Started in my lower, went up to my neck. I was on every type of drug you could imagine. Today it was good. I was only on some Advil today. It was nice. BOB BRYAN: The light stuff. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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