Q. Congratulations on your win today, you’ve got one more win before you’ve called Ivan Lendl's record on 29 wins to start the season. What would it mean to you to reach that mark record?
A. Well it’s a great honor of course it’s very flattering to be part of that elite but it’s not my priority. I’m really taking one match at a time and I hope I can win.
Q. Novak, how did the knee feel coming back into tennis?
A. Great, no pain, nothing.
Q. could you just sum up your performance please Novak?
A. Well I'm happy with today’s performance first, its obviously the first match in Madrid after 2 years, and conditions here are really fast and its hard to control the ball. If your playing a good server like Anderson it’s a big effort to make a break and I tried very hard, it was a lot of work but I did twice every set which was enough.
Q. How different are the conditions here to the other big clay court events in terms of speed and altitude?
A. Yeah well where there is altitude, there is less control of the ball and there are more mistakes and you could feel that so it is crucial to stay focused for each point because you don’t get that much time and you don’t have that much control on these courts and in these conditions so you got to serve well and if you serve well it’s an advantage so those are the conditions here.
Q. Hi, are you going to watch Nadal’s match?
A. No.
Q. Hi Novak, coming up to your 24th birthday, do you think this could be your tennis peak?
A. It’s a fact that I'm playing the best tennis of my life and I'm definitely happy about it. I'm still quite young and I want to continue playing on this level of professional tennis for a couple more years and hope I can reach my goal. I need to stay dedicated and stay professional and work as hard as I have until now.
Q. We all know Rafa's record on clay. If the altitude and other things make this an untypical clay tournament, is this an opportunity to break his sequence?
A. Can you repeat that please, you are talking too fast.
Q. Because it’s different on clay from other tournaments, is this a chance to break his amazing clay sequence?
A. Well, I don’t know if this is a question for me because if I get to play him, I play him in the finals so there’s still a long way until that Sunday. I think there are players that can win against Rafa in these conditions, I mean if there is any court where you will have a chance against him on clay, and it’s this one here. If you serve well and if your begin aggressive you have a chance, nobody is invincible, not him, not anybody else but you know, but all the credit to him for being incredibly successful on this surface and he's definitely very, very hard to beat on clay.
Q. If I could sneak in 2 quick questions, first of all, you’re sounding a bit throaty do you have a cold?
A. I've had it since Belgrade so I've been carrying it since then, but it’s getting better.
Q. Now the more important one, if anyone had said to you at the start of the year, you were going to win your first 28 matches of the year, what would you have said?
A. This, (signs a paper), sign. (laughs) Well, I didn’t expect obviously to win that many matches in a row its a kind of a surprise to me definitely. But I always believed I had quality to win against any player on any surface and I know that so the situation has changed, and I am a more mature player, more experienced, more stable on the court, I have more self believe which is very important for this level.
Q. Novak you once told me that playing top level tennis was a mental affair more than it is a physical affair. Do you still feel that considering that physically you seem to be in very good shape and that coincides with some very good tennis you are playing. Is there another secret, a mental side to this as well?
A. I still think that the bottom line is that this is a mental game in the end because everybody out there is working hours and hours a day on and off the court. There are so many strong and fit players. The difference is obviously that mental ability, to handle the pressure you know, to stay mentally strong to play the right charter at the right time. I still think that in the end, at this level, a couple of points decide the winner. Even today, even though it was a straight set win, a couple of points decided a couple of breaks and if he broke me who knows in which direction the match would have gone so you know, it’s very much mental.
Courtesy: UBITennis
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