Post Shanghai Reaction

Follow his exit from Shanghai, marking the end of his 2006 season, Andy faced the media to sum up his year and set the record straight.

“Let’s give credit where credit’s due. I probably hit the ball better two nights ago, but I didn’t play badly tonight. I didn’t hit the ball badly. I was hitting the ball through the court. I know you talked to David. I hope he told you that he played pretty well tonight, because I think that was definitely the case.”

“It’s a downer, don’t get me wrong. But I can still take a lot of positives away from the last four months of the year. Let’s put it into perspective…going into the Summer, I think I was 18 in the Champions Race with people questioning if I would ever play top level tennis again. Right now I can choose to look at the negatives going into next year, or I can choose to look at the positives. Fortunately the last half of the year there were a lot more positives than negatives.”

“There was literally a practice after Wimbledon where I sat down and I couldn’t have hit the ball into an ocean from the beach, much less a tennis court from the other side. I literally sat down and said, ‘OK, either you really get after it here or you take a couple of months off.’ I’m glad I chose the first option. Like I said, there’s a lot to look forward to next year. I played about as ordinary as I could for about nine months of the year, and I’m still here, 5 or 6 in the world. So, in a wierd way that’s got to be a good thing.”

“He (Nalbandian) played better than I did today. You guys are acting like this is a wierd concept. Going into a match you have a winner and a loser. Someone’s going to play better. He played better than I did today. It’s unfortunate – I’m mad that I didn’t maybe play better on the big points. The way I look at it, I played very well in two out of three matches here. I played OK today. I hit the ball decent. Let’s simplify it a little bit. I don’t think it’s rocket science.”

The audios are available on the Masters Cup website:
http://www.masters-cup.com/1/audio/