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DAVIS CUP BY BNP PARIBAS WORLD GROUP QUARTERFINALS: SERBIA v U.S.A.April 7, 2013Novak DjokovicBogdan ObradovicBOISE, IDAHO N. DJOKOVIC/S. Querrey THE MODERATOR: Questions for Bogdan and Novak. Q. Novak, some of your countrymen here were looking at the injury and basically saying, He's crazy. He's going to keep playing. Tell us what went through your decision making. NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, obviously it's very strong emotion when you play for your country. I guess that's the biggest reason why I kept playing. Injuries are a part of sport, and you try to avoid as much as you can as an athlete. The nature of the injury is still to be determined. One hour, one hour and a half after the end of the match, all I can say now is it doesn't look good. I don't know. I'm very happy, very emotional about the win today. It meant a lot to me personally and the whole team and the nation, and we are very glad to be in semifinals again. So what's going to happen for me next is to try to first of all diagnose and determine the nature of the injury and how bad it is, and then see from there. Q. Why do you say it doesn't look good? Because of the swelling? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Yes. It's swollen. That was the first sign. I didn't have a chance obviously now, time to do MRI, but that'll be the first thing we will do and see how bad it is. Q. Obviously you've got bigger things on your plate with the clay season and the French Open, which is your big goal. It's maybe early to say, but when you were deciding whether to continue or not, were those things in your thoughts? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: No. Just thinking about winning this match and bringing the tie win to Serbia; I'm glad I did. On the other hand, I'm a bit concerned definitely. It's not comfortable feeling what I feel right now with that ankle. As I said, injuries are part of the sport. I have yet to see how serious it is. I was planning to play Monte‑Carlo. I live there and train there, so it feels like a home tournament to me. I love playing there, so I'm going to do everything in my power to recover for that tournament. How realistic it is, to be honest, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you right now. It's still too early. Q. Novak, I don't know if you've seen a replay ‑ you probably remember what happened ‑ but take us through that point. NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I've seen it. They showed me on the TV. Didn't look good. Didn't look nice definitely for me and for everybody who was watching. Definitely what was coming up after that was something that is more my concern than the actual moment. I know what I felt and I know how in general feeling of my ankle was in the continuation of that match. Especially in the first hour or so, I had to go through a lot of pain and struggle. After that, adrenaline, medications, motivation, all these things together combined, you know, eliminated not fully, but most of the pain and allowed me to play the whole match. Q. Novak, can you talk about exactly what type of treatment you got immediately after the injury and throughout the match. NOVAK DJOKOVIC: A lot of icing, you know. That's the first thing you want to do. I had maybe one time in my career serious ankle sprain, so I don't have much experience with that. Hopefully I will not have any more in my career. But my physiotherapist, before we started working he worked with basketball, so he has a lot of experience with this particular injury. He knows how to do the recovery and what kind of program to do. A lot of icing, and of course we can't really be sure what we have to do before we determine 100%, diagnose what it is. It's swollen, but MRI is the only 100%, you know, way to find out the nature of the injury. After that, we'll see what's next. Q. Did the physio give you any thoughts or advice on the court whether you should continue or not? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, we know each other so well. He's not just my physiotherapist, he's my friend. I'm Godfather to his daughter, and there is much more that binds us than just business relationship. So he knows the way I think, the way I feel, and he knows in the end it's strictly my decision if I'm going to continue on or not. Of course he did everything in his power after it happened to make sure that I can continue playing. Because in his interest, my interest, and everybody, of course I want to continue on playing. I don't want to retire the match. We did few tests that indicated that I could continue on, that it wasn't an extreme ligament strain. That allowed me to continue on. I took some medications. Q. Novak, you were playing a little bit tentative in the first two sets. Even got frustrated in the end of the second set with the backhand. So how much of a mental battle was it and how much did you have to push yourself to just play more aggressively? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: As I said, even though you are aware of the fact that when this happens, as an athlete, subconsciously you are going to have some doubts and concerns if you can go 100% and make the quick change of directions and put all you have, all your body weight into that. Those are the things I was thinking about. Even though I was aware of that, I still could not control it. Your body is trying to protect itself. I was having mostly the fight within myself and trying to be focused on the game, and yes, acknowledge but still remove the thoughts from the pain that I had. As I said, if this was a normal ATP Tour event, I don't know, but probably my mindset would be different. You know, I did have a lot motivation and support from the team members and from the crowd. Just feels kind of logical that you do your best in order to finish the match. Luckily for us, it was a win. Q. Just for the captain, must be a very emotional weekend for you. Yesterday was a very dramatic victory, and today with Novak's ankle and coming back and getting better. Just talk about your thoughts on the tie and how it all went. CAPTAIN OBRADOVIC: First of all, I want to congratulate to all of my players, especially to Novak. He managed somehow today to finish this first match of the day. It was really tough situation, you know. So I don't know what to say. Nenad yesterday played really good doubles match with I will Ilija Bozoljac, which was the player that almost no one here knows nothing about him. After the doubles match, probably they will know much more about him. I think that we have a very competitive team. They are highly motivated to play for Serbia, and I think that is the energy that you need if you want to make huge result, which they made 2010 and now they are trying another time. Unfortunately Janko didn't play this tie for us, but hopefully he's going to play in September, and hopefully it's going to be against Canada in Belgrade in front of 20,000 Serbian people. Q. Novak, you mentioned out on the court that you knew Sam was hurting as well with his shoulder. How much of a difference did that make with his serve? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Definitely made a difference on the match, in these conditions especially. Knowing his qualities and how big of a part of his game the serve is, when I saw that he wasn't going for his serve as much as he was in the first two sets, that psychologically helped me to step into the court and take the control over the rallies. It was much easier to return obviously. You could see that his first serves were averaging around 130 miles in first two sets, and then after that it was 110. So that's a big difference. Then the return gets much easier. Q. Your thoughts on the doubles match yesterday. Just seeing it up close and seeing Ilija rise to the occasion and play well for so many hours. NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, I want to thank those guys and the captain and everybody. It wasn't about my win Friday or today. It was just about the team win, the team effort. That's something that is very special and beautiful about this competition. You can represent your country and you get to be a part of a team. You get to feel the team spirit that carries you on to victory. Yesterday's doubles win was extremely important for us. As you can see, today we managed to win a tie, after first match not being worried about what's going to happen in last few matches. Nenad, I have to say that he has had so much experience playing doubles, and he has played for last 15 years for Serbia. He's, how do you say, he's like an older brother to all of us. I know it's difficult for him because he never has a partner and he plays always on Davis Cup. It really changes depending on the tactics and the conditions that we singles guys feel. So there is a lot pressure on him, and he managed to deal with it in an incredible way yesterday. Also Ilija surprised us all. I knew that he was playing well. He played really well when he practiced all week. We were a bit concerned about his physical condition and concentration because he never had best‑of‑five, such a long match. Even though it's doubles‑‑ he plays singles mostly, but he has proven everybody wrong. He actually decided win with few returns and was very calm. Nenad was helping out. So there were a great team. The way we celebrated yesterday after doubles it was like we won the tie, because we knew how much it means to us. Q. Novak, you mentioned getting an MRI when you get home. Will that be tomorrow? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Yeah, tomorrow. Fast as I can. Q. In Serbia? NOVAK DJOKOVIC: No, in Monte‑Carlo. Q. This may be random. I'm sorry Novak. But the national anthem that was sung, from someone that knows it well, how did they do? CAPTAIN OBRADOVIC: Amazing. Really amazing. NOVAK DJOKOVIC: We were talking about it. CAPTAIN OBRADOVIC: We should give them our passport. NOVAK DJOKOVIC: They had great, perfect pronunciation of the notes and the words. We were really surprised, because Serbia n, you know, is not an easy language to learn, especially from somebody not coming from our part of the world. And then to sing the anthem the way they did, well done. Thank you. Q. Novak, overall, how was the experience in Boise? What did you think of the whole production here this week? CAPTAIN OBRADOVIC: Production of potato is very good. (Laughter.) NOVAK DJOKOVIC: That's what we heard Boise is most famous for, so we got to experience the different kinds of potatoes. We're very happy with that. Well, mostly our whereabouts were the hotel and the arena. Had great comfort in the hotel, privacy, and had all the best conditions here to prepare and play well. Had a fantastic locker room we enjoyed very much. The people, the organization were very kind to us, so we were very happy with our stay. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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