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FEDCUP WORLD GROUP PLAY-OFFS: FRANCE v U.S.A.


April 16, 2014


Alize Cornet

Caroline Garcia

Amelie Mauresmo


ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

THE MODERATOR:  Thank you to Team France for being with us. Please use the microphone as we did before.
Questions?

Q.  I would imagine in most FedCup, particularly when you're on the home, it's a home court advantage.  When you play the United States, sometimes the crowds seem to be smaller and not as passionate.  Is that an advantage for you guys playing?
CAPTAIN MAURESMO:  I think it's, yeah, maybe the more quiet there the better it is for us.
I think the girls are also so focused what they have to do.  Of course it's always great to have the support of the crowd when you play at home, but I think they would be ready also to compete in front of a loud crowd that would cheer against them, against us.
I think they're ready for it regardless.  But we don't really know what to expect this weekend.  We'll see.  Don't know if the venue will be full or not or how many people are going to show up.
But we have our little group of supporters also, so we will be good.

Q.  Cornet and Garcia, you both won titles coming into this competition.  How has that impacted or increased your confidence for this FedCup event?
CAROLINE GARCIA:  Yeah, it's always good to win a tournament, for me the first one.  Really it's a lot of confident.  It's always difficult to win like four matches on the row and to beat good player like Jankovic.
I'm very confident and I know I can do it.  But always difficult against good player, and American player will be very motivate also.
So I think it's good for us.  It's some positive thing.  Sometimes it's good to play a tournament and don't do the match.  So it's good.
ALIZE CORNET:  Yeah, no, she's right.  It's always nice to get some confidence.  For myself, I was playing on the hard court indoor, so it was the best preparation ever for FedCup.
Just have to deal with the jet lag now, but should be fine in a couple days.  Just very motivated.  As she said, it doesn't happen so often that you don't lose a match for the whole week.
So hopefully going to keep going this way in the weekend.

Q.  Have you had a chance to experience St. Louis or done anything fun around the city?
ALIZE CORNET:  Is there some fun?  Is there some funny things to do?  We're motivated to know that.  (Laughter.)
CAROLINE GARCIA:  We been to the Hard Rock Cafe yesterday, but we were the only ones.  (Laughter.)
ALIZE CORNET:  Yeah, we saw the big arch.  I think that's really, really beautiful.  We should go to see it from closer definitely, but we didn't have time yet.
Beautiful mall.  (Laughter.)

Q.  Is there anything different you do to prepare yourselves for a tournament like this, and kind of what do you know about your competition?
CAPTAIN MAURESMO:  Competition being the girls, the American girls?

Q.  Yeah.
CAPTAIN MAURESMO:  They know them very well from being on the tour all year long sometimes competing against them in other tournaments.
So we try to gather information here and there and then have a good profile of the player that they're going to face on the weekend, each of them.  Yeah.

Q.  What's the vibe like to play in FedCup and play for your country?  It is different than any other tournament.  What's it like as players individually?
ALIZE CORNET:  It's amazing to play for our country.  It happens only twice a year and it feels very different from the tour where it's individual and like, you know, very ‑‑ you only play our yourself and you have your own world, your own team.
This time of the year we can be all together sharing some good moments on and off court and some different emotions.  So very looking forward to this weekend.
We are lucky to have a really nice team.  We get along well together.  That's very important for the group.
THE MODERATOR:  Any final questions?  Thank you all very much.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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