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AEGON CHAMPIONSHIPSJune 15, 2013Roger RasheedLONDON, ENGLAND THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. On a day like this, how do you keep focused on the fact that they might be playing at any time between now and dark? ROGER RASHEED: Well, I think if you look at the forecast and you ‑‑ you've got to plan for the day, so you've got to let them know that the day could be it's licorice all sorts, so you have to be as loose as you can. I think if you get in with too much hype about preparing yourself‑‑ you know, you go and warm up, which we did early, and then you just sort of suck and see it, because you will spend too much time getting ready, not getting ready, trying to get yourself in match mode. That's not what you want to do. I think it's more of a light procedure getting yourself in match mode for these days. Looks like you can be here, be ready at 3:00 or not be playing at all. Q. What's he doing? ROGER RASHEED: He's pretty relaxed. He might be spinning on his head. That would be Gaël, actually. No, he's relaxing. He sits down there. Everyone has their phones, as they do, or he has a lot of French guys in there, as well, so they chitchat and I junk in every now and then because I can't speak French. So, yeah, he's very relaxed. He's not a tense individual. There are some players that do actually get concerned on days like this, like, What should I do? And I try and keep things pretty relaxed. Q. Is Andy there as well? ROGER RASHEED: Andy was in the locker room originally when Lleyton was on the court obviously. He's down there. He would be down there now. Q. Could you talk us through the changes you have seen in Jo since you took up with him and how much more there is to come? ROGER RASHEED: I think there is a lot more to come. I really do. I know he's a 28‑year‑old, but I think the age of Jo is very irrelevant, purely because he missed three years of tennis, 19, 20, 21. He played five weeks each of those years. I think the number near his name is not really the number as far as tennis schooling goes. So he's a 24‑, 25‑year‑old in my mind as a schooled tennis player. He played very natural with a lot of flair and pretty much loosely, in a good way, and now we're just sort of shoring up his weapons. I'm not taking ‑‑never take the heart out of that natural flair, but just give him a little bit more security in certain areas or just some understanding of a few different ways to go about his business at times, depending on maybe on the scoreline, etcetera, and getting ‑‑Jo's instinct, sometimes players play and don't really realize how good they might be. They're out there and they don't know what the opponent may be feeling. Jo is learning all the time. Physically, obviously, we have added a lot more grunt to him physically. He's a great athlete, but I think he can be an extremely high‑quality athlete, again. I think we're still another 6 to 12 months away from really bursting that bubble. So I think you're going to see a lot of ‑‑you're sitting there, Well, how much more can you add? But in small ways‑‑ I can't go into it strike by strike, but there is a lot you can do to maybe save a dozen points. You know how many times tennis matches are won by three our four points. Q. Was it hard to get his chin up after what happened last Friday? ROGER RASHEED: Not really. The one thing I have noticed with Jo is that he doesn't ‑‑some players could spend a week in doomsday after something like that where he's very good at ‑‑I asked him about that when we first started about how he deals with losses, and he's pretty good ‑‑he will reflect on it, but he will move on. I think all those months on your own, he didn't have somebody be there and actually get involved with you and say, This is what you've done wrong or right, or, These are the good things. So with me there is obviously there is a post ‑‑we look at it post‑match and actually look at things. And, yeah, for sure he's not ‑‑he wouldn't be firing all cylinders this week. I think it's obvious. Not obvious. He's actually jumping around, but you've got to come down. The adrenaline has to come out of your body. It would be like Andy after Wimbledon or Lleyton after the Australian Open, etcetera. Your adrenaline pours out of your body because you do invest a lot time in your home Grand Slam, and players who don't have their home Grand Slam with chances of winning them, I don't think they can appreciate what that individual has to go through. For them to do it so well, for Andy to do it so well, and Lleyton who made the final in Australia in '05 and Jo here in Paris, it's a real credit to them. He's quite obviously not at his peak right now physically. He will be by Monday at Wimbledon. And we have played this down to just use it as a real casual week of tennis. Playing good tennis, obviously, because we love it here, but being casual, I'm not ‑‑I'm normally pretty intense, as you know. But I have fun. This week I'm all fun. There's no tennis schooling going on this week. And it won't start till Monday or Tuesday, you know, next week. Q. Did you leave him for a day or two after that? ROGER RASHEED: We were obviously in the same place. He had Saturday on his own, and then we hooked up again Sunday, took the train down here and we were on the practice court for an hour Sunday. Pretty casual. I think I won 6‑1 that set. But, yes, so he didn't have long, when you think about it, to come off that Friday. Then on Sunday here, you don't have long. I actually said to him, How do you feel‑‑ on Sunday‑‑ How are you feeling? A lot comes out of a coach, as well, and you're sort of trying to move all the moving parts, make sure everything is right for weeks going in, every training session, etcetera. I find I get really flat, for an excitable individual. He said, No, I feel pretty good. That was a bit of a concern for me, because I thought ‑‑ I know he's going to actually have a down at some point, which is fine. He'll be ready to go. He's in good spirits. He learns to pick things up. Q. I think here we perhaps don't fully appreciate, as a country, what Andy Murray has achieved and the expectation of the home Slam. ROGER RASHEED: Yeah. For starters, you have to embrace it. You have to love it. I think Andy loves it now. He definitely ‑‑he's never not performed here, really. Jo loves having the involvement of the French public. You know, Lleyton also, even though he spent a long time trying to get to a final of the Australian Open, but we finally cracked it. So I think you have to endorse it and embrace it. If you feel like it's a burden for you to have, you know, 50 media following you, all the cameras and every journalist wanting to get a piece of you, etcetera, etcetera, if you think that's a burden ‑‑I know you have to screen it and sort of isolate yourself, for sure, but you've got to be sort of ‑‑you have to go with the flow a little bit and give it to them, as well, so you actually can embrace, everyone can embrace you, and I think you'll be fine. At the end of the day, everyone is rooting for you. Q. If Jo‑Wilfried Tsonga isn't going to win Wimbledon, do you think Andy Murray is? ROGER RASHEED: That's a good question. Q. How about a good answer? ROGER RASHEED: Yeah, it's a big battle. I mean, you've got to ‑‑ you know, Roger, looks like ‑‑ who knows what can happen at Halle? If he gets a title there and he comes in pretty excited, which he normally does anyway. Regardless if he wins the title there or not, he will come in pretty good. And then you have Novak who is resting and recouping. And Rafa‑‑ it's a lot of challenges. It's very hard until ‑‑it's interesting to look at the draw, look about where a few different people are placed. There are obviously some floaters around that can be interesting. And then obviously through the second week potentially where there might be some matchups which might carve a little bit of juice out of some individuals. It's hard to say. But obviously Andy's form on grass is exceptional. You know, he gets it. He gets a grass court. It's pretty simple. He gets it from a baseline perspective, because obviously there is a lot of baseline tennis, but he just gets the natural idiosyncrasies of the grass, what it does, what the ball does, and what shots to play at the right time and movement patterns. He's a very naturally crafted grass court tennis player. Q. Just back on Jo, when you look back to what he did in 2008, Australian Open final, when you were watching him from afar, did you feel that, you know, that there was more potential there? Were you surprised that he hasn't ‑‑I mean, he's been right up there for the last five years, but were you surprised he hasn't achieved more? ROGER RASHEED: Achieving is interesting. It's a tough question. It's a tough thing to answer, because I saw Jo as a 16‑year‑old and I say Gaël Monfils as a 15‑year‑old. I watched them and said to a few people, Both these guys will be top 10 players if they have the right vehicle around them. Depending on who is around them, they could do whatever because of the firepower they had, as two young kids, athleticism, firepower, looked like they had some real passion for the game. I'm not surprised, because you could say the same question about Mark Philippoussis, not that they're ‑‑I'm not putting them together, but the question was always about Mark Philippoussis was did he reach his potential? Well, yeah, that's his potential, because he didn't quite have some of the other attributes that some of the other players had, but he did have attributes that, you know, others didn't. So potential is interesting. We'd all like to have the mentality of Rafa, you know, something of someone else boxed in, and then we'd have some bloody Supermen out there. I think everyone has a deficiency in some areas, and it might be the tipping edge while‑‑ what we see on the court, what we see in the good moments, we think, why can't they give us that every single minute of the day against the best quality all the time? It's a lot different. And also a lot of players are playing for different reasons. There is a lot of different things between different tennis players. Some players are so living and breathing tennis that they will not do anything else. Others definitely want to have a little bit of an outside social life with it. Others are in a different place in their development patterns. It's quite complex when you look at those athletics. I think you have to take your hat off to the guys that actually live it, breathe it, and have the results they're having, especially the ones we're lucky enough, us guys, you and me, to follow around. We're in a ‑‑we have a pretty good sport going on at the moment. Q. In the Slams, is there a cutoff point in the ratings where people have got a realistic chance of winning the title? The record over the last 30, 40 Slams speaks for itself. Realistically, is there a point where you say, Well, somebody outside the top 10 or 15 is not really going to press for the title? ROGER RASHEED: Probably depends who they are, like if they're coming back from an injury, if they're not quite seeded in the right space, so they may not have the points. They could be that type of player. I mean, for example, you look at Gaël ‑‑I'm not saying that he could have won Roland Garros, but look what he did first round. He was a floater you didn't want to play at Roland Garros just because of what he can offer there. Even if he hadn't played five years, he'd turn up and offer that same stuff. There is that type of player who is really a No. 1 to 15 type, in that bracket. He's in 10 to 15 at the moment tennis‑wise. It's very ‑‑you've got to be seeded, I think. I think you need to be seeded and you probably have got to be seeded ‑‑ the top 8 would help, you know. I don't think ‑‑ you know, if you bite too many pieces of the apple, I think you're going to (indiscernible), I reckon. At the moment, you know ‑‑you need right now an upset. You need one of the top 4, I think just to give yourself‑‑ you can do it. There's no reason you can't beat through them. The other thing you have to remember, which I like to remind Jo, whatever, is that every match is just a completely individual occasion. So if you don't look at‑‑ if you're not so obsessed by the draw, and you just have one individual scenario, so today my job is Roger Federer. So I have done that. Great. You know, I played well. But I've got a day. And I won again, so today my job is someone else. If you're not obsessed by, Gee, I've got to beat three of them, how am I going to do that, but my job is just this today, and you can get your head around that, there's no reason why you can't go and beat three of them, which, if you're outside the top 4 seeds, if ‑‑ there is no chance ‑‑ that's if they're still alive. First of all, everybody has to be alive. Assuming they're all alive, you've got to beat three of them or two of them. That's how you've got to see it. You have to address just the individual occasion. Q. If Jo played first in Paris, do you think it would have made any difference? ROGER RASHEED: Yeah, yeah. I would have ‑‑I'm still surprised ‑‑ the fact that he played second, I'm still baffled it was a quarter‑full stadium. Because if you're the public and you've got your man rolling up, even if he was second, I reckon you stay in the stadium. I reckon you get someone to get you a drink, but you stay in the stadium because you want to give him the reception he probably deserved to walk out to. Yeah, I was pretty amazed. I knew ‑‑ I probably knew it was coming. Very much similar to a Davis Cup tie. First match gets played, and all of a sudden everyone goes and has a drink. We had 28 degrees, so it was pretty hot. Everyone took off. But I was hoping that they would have stuck around for the entry on center court, because I feel like when he walked out, in his mind, he would have been visualizing a full house, and when you've got like a little ripple, I think it probably burst the balloon, in my opinion, just burst the balloon, because there is no other reason why he would have not come out with that sort of energy, because he was ready to roll, he was very relaxed. There was nothing to suggest that he was going to be like he was. Q. You've watched Andy's career. You have been reasonably close to it. He's now got that one Grand Slam, has an Olympic gold medal. Is there potential to have a lot, lot more? ROGER RASHEED: Yeah. Well, he's 26? Yeah, for sure. I mean, athletically he's very good. He's got ‑‑I think he'll always have the passion to play for quite a while until he's ‑‑ you know, to me he's like‑‑ he's very similar to Lleyton in, like he loves the competition. I'm not sure if he had three kids he'd still want to play, but he is passionate. I can't see him leaving the tour as a 28‑year‑old, going, I'm done with the tour. I think he'll see it out. I also think it's very personally driven. Andy doesn't need ‑‑the one thing I like‑‑ you know, I have seen Andy from a young kid, he doesn't need anyone to drive him. Obviously you want people in your group, but he's very individually driven, which is a great thing to have. It's like very similar to Lleyton. So they will go and make things happen. They will go for that run if they need to. They will just do it because they know it's important for them. He's going to put himself in that position a number of times. It's whether he walks through the door, and I think there is a group here that can. I feel Jo has the opportunity over the next three or four years, as well, very much so, because I feel like he can take his game into that space. Andy, everything moves around, you know. Roger is playing at, you know, 30. Everyone is moving on and moving around, so it's amazing what will happen in 24 months. There is Jo actually at the moment and Andy playing football. They're pretty relaxed. Q. But, I mean, you just say he was self‑driven, but the common perception in England was he was always self‑driven but it was Lendl who supplied the magic key to open the door. Does a coach do that, or... ROGER RASHEED: Well, they bring in ‑‑they bring in new things and they might bring in a bit of‑‑ you know, Ivan, I think Ivan has gone out and said he doesn't actually need to coach if he doesn't want to. So it's not really ‑‑it has nothing to do with financially, but he obviously has a passion for the game and he obviously likes the way Andy goes about it. For him to be there and to be there and actually giving out some legitimate instructions that they agree on, for someone who has been there, and had that full ride, you know ‑‑and Andy is a ‑‑once he buys into you, I think he's a hundred miles an hour. And I'm sure Lendl sorted a few things out. There is changes in his game, you can see that, but there are obvious changes Andy would have wanted to make, anyway. Also the more often you're there, the more you believe that eventually if you're talented enough you'll go the distance. You know, because he'll start to get himself ‑‑he worked himself out. He's matured, as well. You can never underestimate tennis maturity on court. Sometimes guys need to fall over a lot before they actually finally get through, and then actually, all of a sudden, if you ask Andy now how he feels on the court going, if he had to walk into a Grand Slam final, he'd have his natural nerves, but he would probably feel very relax as well now compared to the eager, where am I looking, that sort of stuff. You can see it on his face. I think you learn those things. And you can never ‑‑you can never see when it's going to happen. I mean, Lleyton had it like that (snapping fingers).  He was born for the big match. Put me in a big match now, big crowd, put me in another country. Give it to me. No one taught him that. That was just him. Lleyton was more‑‑ you know, you're more nervous in the first round of a Grand Slam anywhere in the world than in the semifinals or the second week. When you walk in the second week, you didn't always have to talk to Lleyton. You talked, but it was, Bring it, give it to me. And you knew he'd perform. Barely did he ever not perform in a big moment. Q. Are you impressed by what he's done here this week? ROGER RASHEED: Yeah, it's funny when you spend so many years with him, I know his ‑‑I know everything. We're extremely close, both passionately driven, as well, for absolutely the same reasons. I'm always ‑‑I'm never amazed, because I spent so much time with him. People say, Who do you reckon will win, Lleyton or ‑‑ I say, Oh, Lleyton. Well, but why? He's barely played. I say, Yeah, but‑‑ there is always a "but" with me. It's just his mind, mentality, he loves it all. The fact that he plays tall guys on grass, I like that setup for him all the time, because it sort of works for him. All his matchups that he's had, I have liked all of them. I'm glad to see him winning some matches, because he's got a good crowd on the court. I'm glad he's winning matches here, and that gives him a lot move oomph going into Wimbledon for sure. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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