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U.S. OPENSeptember 3, 2013Andy MurrayNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK A. MURRAY/D. Istomin THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. It seemed like your back or something was bothering you in the first set when you lost. Were you physically okay? ANDY MURRAY: I'm just a bit stiff today. It was extremely cold on the court, very windy. Often when you sort of heat up and then, you know, sometimes in between sets or if you have quite a long break, you know, with the wind, you cool down pretty quickly. It was very, very different conditions the last few days where it's been very humid and you have been sweating a lot. It was very cold out there today. Q. Night match on Ashe, but was it one you could enjoy tonight or just feel it was one you have to get through? ANDY MURRAY: I mean, yeah, I wanted to just try and get through the match. In the end it was difficult conditions. It was extremely windy today. With the way he plays, he hits the ball pretty big and flat on both sides, you know, strokes pretty low, hard at times to control. He made it very difficult for me. With the way the third set ended up going, I was just very happy to get it done, because, you know, he had chances at the end of the third set to go ahead. Q. Is it fun to defend your first Grand Slam title or is it pressure or both? ANDY MURRAY: No, I haven't felt a huge amount of difference once the tournament started. I have been saying all week it was all different the week beforehand doing some extra things, and, you know, was a bit anxious about it around the weekend because I played my first match very late. I just literally wanted to get on the court and play at that stage. I wasn't really thinking about anything else. I just wanted to go out and play, and I haven't thought about it since. Q. You have made slow starts the last three matches. Are you concerned at all about that? ANDY MURRAY: I mean, I lost obviously a set in a tiebreak today, and I could have won that set. I mean, I would have liked to have maybe started a bit quicker. But, I mean, I don't think in the matches before I started that slow. I mean, I won both of the sets, and I wasn't in danger really of losing either of them at any stage. I wasn't breaks down or anything like that. You know, today was tough. It was tricky, and I'm just glad I got through in the end. Q. Is your serve working the way you'd like? ANDY MURRAY: Again, it depends. I mean, you have to do what you can with what the conditions are. When it's windy, serving is trickier. I lost my serve how many times tonight in four sets? Q. Twice. ANDY MURRAY: Twice? I mean, that's not terrible. The round before I don't think I lost my serve against Mayer, and the round before that maybe once. I think I would like to be serving a little bit harder, but it's not always ‑‑ Q. But that's dictated by the conditions. ANDY MURRAY: Sometimes, yeah. I mean, if you're not comfortable on serve you're going to take some pace off of it. But the way it was tonight, try and give yourself a bit more margin. Q. You have been really consistent at reaching the quarterfinal stage. How much confidence does it give you when you get into matches like this? ANDY MURRAY: I think now hopefully I'll start playing a little bit better from now on. I mean, sometimes the first week of a slam, you know, I've played very well. Sometimes you maybe feel like there's a little bit something to lose. I don't know. But I'm in the quarterfinals of a slam. It's not an easy thing to do, and the matches are going to get tougher. I'll have to up my game. Q. What's the key against Stan? When you play Stan, what's the key for you? ANDY MURRAY: I'll need to play a good match. He's improved I think this year quite a bit. Some of the things he didn't do so well before he's improved. So he has less weaknesses. You know, he's more experienced now. You know, he has a very good backhand. He serves well. You know, he's solid up at the net. He makes a lot of returns. He makes it very tricky for you. He's a top player. It will be a very tough match for me. Q. He said you practice quite a bit. Anything different in him, maybe his confidence or his demeanor this year? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I don't know exactly why. I don't know if he's, you know, working harder. He made a coaching change around the clay court season, you know, which may have helped him because he was without a coach for quite a while. That could have helped him a bit. You know, the match he had with Novak in Australia beginning of the year, that could have also attributed to it, as well. There are a lot of things that go into it. But, you know, he hasn't changed any of his strokes technically or anything. You'd expect most of it to be confidence. Q. What did you think when you saw Federer went down? ANDY MURRAY: I was practicing at the same time, so I didn't get to see that much of it. That was obviously surprising. He had won against Tommy I think ten times in a row, so surprising result for him. But like I think a lot of players go through periods where they're not playing their best tennis, and that's obviously been the case with Roger, you know, since around probably Wimbledon time. He had a few issues with his back this year, as well. He's still hitting the ball well. He still has the same strokes. It's just when you lose a few matches you're supposed to win, then you lose a little bit of confidence. That's huge in this game. Q. How big is confidence, is the belief that you can beat everybody, and when other players believe they don't have a chance almost against you? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, it's very important. If someone goes on the court not thinking they can win against you, then the match is as good as done. When they believe that you could win, in an individual sport when you're just playing against one person, if you believe you can beat him and they don't have a very good day, then you can cause an upset. It's as simple as that. Q. Davis Cup team named today. Looks like you're scheduled to play maybe three days in a row. Did you want to play doubles? ANDY MURRAY: It depends on the first day. I won't play if, you know, I have a four‑ or five‑hour match, because we have guys that are good enough to step in and play and win. We have a lot of very good doubles players. You know, there still can be changes made to the team between now and then. We'll see. But if I'm fit and, you know, fresh after the first day, and me and Colin obviously played well a few weeks ago, I think that would be the best chance to win the match. Q. Question about squash. Am I right you supported the bid to get squash back into the games? ANDY MURRAY: Yeah. Q. What was your reason for that? ANDY MURRAY: Well, I played it a little bit when I was younger. I used to play at our local sports club. We had two squash courts. I used to go and watch my dad playing, you know, club matches. I mean, I like it. I think it's a tough sport. I think physically it's very challenging. I could be wrong, but I think why it's not on TV as much is because it almost seems like the same point is getting played. It's maybe not the best spectator sport, but it's a very difficult sport to play. You have to be extremely fit, have very good hand/eye coordination, good feel, and good touch. It's another racquet sport. You know, when you play one, you like to tend to like to watch the other ones, as well. I love watching badminton, too. Q. Wondered what you made of his shots through the legs. ANDY MURRAY: Well, there was one of them in particular, yeah. The one where it kind of went over his head and he hit one. No, that's not really surprising, but I think it was maybe 5‑4 in the first set when he had a pretty easy shot. I personally wouldn't try something like that at that stage, but he did, and, yeah, it was a bit surprising. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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