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ROLAND GARROSJune 3, 2014Ernests GulbisPARIS, FRANCE E. GULBIS/T. Berdych THE MODERATOR: Questions in English, please. Q. A few years ago tennis experts said that you are a great talent. ERNESTS GULBIS: Which tennis experts? Q. A few of them. ERNESTS GULBIS: Okay. Q. Now you showed it. What took you so long? ERNESTS GULBIS: (Laughter.) I answer this question many times. What took me so long? I think I was eating wrong. I had the wrong diet. Everybody was talking about this gluten‑free diet. My diet is full‑on gluten. I like a lot of ketchup, a lot of unhealthy stuff so there is a balance which I found in the last couple of years (smiling). Q. What do you expect in the next match? ERNESTS GULBIS: What do I expect? Q. To hit so hard like today? ERNESTS GULBIS: From my side, of course. From his side I expect really stable, stable tennis. No mistakes, no easy points. I just have to be from first point till the last 100% without any excuse. Q. You said yesterday that you thought you had one of the best backhands on the tour. Out of the guys that are left in the tournament now ‑ Djokovic, Nadal, Murray, Monfils ‑ do you feel like you have the best backhand out of the six guys that are left in the tournament? ERNESTS GULBIS: Why my opinion should have changed from day to day? If I said that I have the best one, one of the best throughout all the tour, doesn't matter who's left in the tournament. My backhand didn't change overnight. Q. Are you trying to make up for lost years? ERNESTS GULBIS: Money‑wise or... (Laughter.) Cash‑wise, definitely. I need to earn some money to break even. Q. Don't you have a rich father? ERNESTS GULBIS: Yes. Q. So you don't need money. ERNESTS GULBIS: I need money, to turn it on my own. Q. It's an ego thing? You need to show you can actually do this time? ERNESTS GULBIS: Okay, if you want to go that way, then I will explain a little bit. For me, I found throughout these years what is important for me to be truly happy. For me to be truly happy ‑ I said it many times, also in the press conference; I don't know if you were here yesterday or the day before ‑ that my happiness comes only from doing well my job. Then I can really live my life to the maximum. You know, I can enjoy the stuff much more. So for me it's really important for my happiness just to be successful on the tennis court. Forget about the money. Forget about fame. It's just about my inner comfort. That's it. For me, that's all that matters in the end of the day. Q. On a boring tennis subject, you served exceptionally well today. Are you serving as well consistently, do you think, as you've ever done in your career? ERNESTS GULBIS: Yes. Well, I remember the match I played against Berdych. It was in Rotterdam, and I lost the match because he was returning really well. On a fast surface he was standing close to the line, a little bit similar like Roger is returning close to the line, not going far back. On clay it's a little bit tougher because you know you have a little bit more bad bounces and the ball is a little bit higher, so I think it's a little bit easier if you step back. So for clay my serve was working better against Berdych than on fast surface. I think I served the best against Radek Stepanek. Against Roger the level was a little bit down. Now today it was really high. Today everything was good. I felt physically so good. I felt that I can run forever. I felt that he cannot make winner, you know? That's how I felt on court. I felt that I covered it really well. If I feel so confident, you know, from the baseline, then everything just comes together. Q. For a long time you talked about being better than your ranking and having these results. Now you're kind of getting everything all at once this week. Unless Monfils wins the tournament, you'll be top 10 for the first time. ERNESTS GULBIS: I will be happy if Gaël wins. I like the guy. I want him playing good. We need guys like this. Q. What does it mean for you to get all this stuff sort of at once? How much does this week mean to you if it comes together? ERNESTS GULBIS: It's not coming yet. I don't understand it yet. You know, even now, you know, I don't want to be too happy. I don't want to get too much stuff in my head. I take it day by day. You know, just cruising along, you know, just performing well on court. I'm not putting too much thoughts in it. Not reading any news. I talk to you guys and I talk to my coach. That's it. I talk to my family. That's it. I'm not really overexcited about it. I think that's an important key, to keep your mind calm. Q. Last February your mom told you you should probably quit tennis. ERNESTS GULBIS: Now she tells me if I win the tournament I shouldn't quit (Laughter.) Q.I'm wondering why tennis? You could do many different things with your life. You have all these off‑court pursuits. You're a smart guy. Why grind away on this tour? ERNESTS GULBIS: Thank you. Q. Yeah, no worries. ERNESTS GULBIS: Why? Q. Yeah, why. ERNESTS GULBIS: You know, sometimes we don't choose our profession; the profession chooses us. I was five years old when parents brought me to tennis. If they would bring me to football or basketball, that wasn't my choice. I was just an active kid. I liked every kind of sport. Tennis basically chose me because my father had a friend who was a tennis coach. That's why I started, you know. I'm pretty sure that I would be good with anything with a ball. I think I would be pretty good basketball player, pretty good football player, you know, because I like ball. I have a good feeling for it, you know. Just happened to be tennis. For a while, you know, I was a little bit pissed off about it because I wish I could play on a team, you know, because in my understanding, it's much easier. In my understanding, tennis is one of the toughest sports. You cannot compare to nothing. You're all alone there. If you have a bad day, that's it. You're done. If you have bad day in football, you give a pass. You score a goal. You won. It's tough, but it has its bonuses. I think if you think the right thoughts and understand what you're doing, then it builds up your character much more than it would in any other sport. It's up and down. Now I'm really happy that it is tennis. I need to prove to myself that I can be the best that I can be in tennis, and then I'm going to have a clear and easy mind when I'm 35 years old sitting on a beach with a... (demonstrating drinking.) (Laughter.) Q.A beach ball? ERNESTS GULBIS: (Smiling). Q. The last time you played Novak was probably three years ago, and you lost badly to him in Indian Wells. He hasn't played the kind of player that you are right now. Do you think that's kind of an advantage, that you can surprise him? ERNESTS GULBIS: I think just for me it's 0‑0 with him in matches. The way I'm playing now, I never played like this. I never felt like this. It's just 0‑0. What was in the past I don't even consider. I beat him once, also in a bad match. He was changing racquet, and he was playing really bad. So it's 0‑0 for me. Q. You said about needing to do your job as well as you can to be happy. Is that something you feel you've always known, or was it a realization you had at some point? ERNESTS GULBIS: It was definitely a realization. I just thought everything is gonna come too easy for me because everything in life was coming just ‑‑it was coming. I wasn't really thinking about it and not putting enough effort into it. I was in school. I never had problems in school. Everything was coming easy. All the information. Tennis, everything was coming easy. I thought I'm just gonna grind in life like this, easy without any effort, and be successful. And then... And then... Shit happened (Laughter.) Q.Now two days off. You have an important match coming up. How does it affect your preparation? What do you think will be the key against Djokovic in terms of the game on court? ERNESTS GULBIS: I have no idea honestly what will be my preparation because I'm in the first time Grand Slam semifinal, first time in this situation. Hopefully my coach can give me some advice. If not, not. So I'm going to react what was coming. I will say I have no plan. Q. Two days, does that kind of make it harder? ERNESTS GULBIS: No. I think it's easier. You have great rest. I was surprised at how I felt physically today. Yesterday after match with Federer it was for me really tough mentally and physically. I just recovered so well, that for me, it wouldn't matter if I would play even tomorrow, I could play. I can play in two days, three days, in one month, whatever. I'm ready any time. Q. I think a lot of people are happy you didn't listen to your mother. I wanted to ask you about something you said the other day. You had small bets going on with Dominic and with Gunther. Could you just clarify what's involved with that? ERNESTS GULBIS: With what? Q. You said you had small bets... ERNESTS GULBIS: Bets on push‑ups. You know, push‑ups. Whoever loses the match makes more push‑ups. Q. I think you made a very big progress mentally. I don't know if I'm right. If you agree, what was the difference? Was that coming easy with the success or was it hard work for you? ERNESTS GULBIS: Age doesn't come alone, so hopefully I get more and more experienced. I talked about it. I talked about it already. A lot of things change in my understanding, and it just came together. Two years ago when I first came to Gunther's place in Vienna to practice. He didn't deal with those kind of problems which my other coaches were dealing three, four years ago. You know, I never missed ‑‑I missed a practice once with Gunther because I have a long night. I called him 7:00 in the morning, and I said, Gun, I cannot come to practice. He understood it. It was once. He can tell you this. With other coaches, you know, first time when Hernan Gumy came to Latvia to prepare for Davis Cup. Eight days of preparation I missed five days of practice. It was in Latvia. So, you know, I was not ‑‑yeah, and then you evolve. You start to understand, Okay, first, make one step. Don't miss five days of practice. Just miss three days of practice and then two days and then one and then nothing. So it's a process. Q. I just meant the mental part of it. Did you have special mental training? ERNESTS GULBIS: No, no, no, no special nothing. Just evolution. Q. You're now talking about tennis as a job, and of course you're a professional. That doesn't surprise. When did you start thinking that this was a job and not a game since you were kid? Later? Recently? And also, one more question about you and Djokovic. When you were playing when you were 14 years old. Who was winning? Who was more hungry if he had no diet at that point? What do you remember of those days when you were playing Djokovic? ERNESTS GULBIS: Yeah, about Djokovic, you know, it wasn't that we spent too much time together. I came to Niki Pilic's academy at one point and he was before me there, and then I stick to that place, you know, and he was just coming and going. Basically we were there all around all ‑‑ during this four, five years when I was practicing there, maybe one month together, you know. So maybe even less. We had to practice. We had couple of sets. I couldn't really beat him. But I could beat him on carpet. There was really fast carpet indoors, so I could beat him there. He was ‑‑I told this. He was really professional already at that time. I remember we had a friend. You know, there was one Croatian guy who was all about the girls at that age already. He was dressing up. He was looking good, putting perfume, sunglasses, going to talk to the girls. I see Novak, he's going to stretch, you know. And Novak told me that, Yeah, you can have anybody. Can have all the girls in the world, you know. But to be really successful in tennis, you need to‑‑ something like that he said to me. I remember it still. That's a kid who is 15 years old. I didn't forget. (Laughter.) About the job, when did I understand it? I still think it's not a job. I think it's half hobby. It's enjoyable job, very enjoyable job. Q. The ATP guy says that you're named after writer Ernest Hemingway. He wrote about sports a bit. Did you ever read his work, take something from it? ERNESTS GULBIS: Unfortunately not. Unfortunately I trust only two people with books, who is recommending me books. That's my father and my mother. One book, Gunther recommended me, but that's a different kind of book. My mother is pushing me to read something from Hemingway. My father is more giving me some of the more newer stuff, modern stuff. You know, he's not too much ‑‑he's a walking bibliothèque. We have a lot of books in our country house, and I read some of the Dostoyevsky, you know. But in Russia, for example, we have really good TV, which is basically you watch it and you know exactly what's in the book, you know. So he prefers that I read other stuff than what I can watch. And otherwise, I do it through TV, you know. With Hemingway, it's a longer conversation why I didn't read it yet. Maybe afterwards. Q. What about the S? If you are named after Ernest, why is your name Ernests? ERNESTS GULBIS: In Latvia, all the men words finish with S and woman words are with A or E. That's just grammatics. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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