TENNIS ATP FINALS 2014 – Andy Murray d. Milos Raonic 6-3, 7-5. Group B
Q. Are you good in mathematics? Do you know you still can qualify? Do you know what you need to do in order to qualify?
MILOS RAONIC: There’s a slim possibility. I have to win the next match in straight sets. I’m not going to start counting games now.
Q. Your first serve percentage against Roger was low. Today was about 50%. Something you can put your finger on why playing indoors? Is it the pressure of facing Roger and Andy back to back?
MILOS RAONIC: No. To be frank, my first serve percentage at this moment, at least today, shouldn’t have been above 40%. I started hitting serves 115 miles an hour to get it past 50%.
Whatever the reason is, I have 24 hours to solve it, and I’m going to need to if I want to have any hope. There’s no way around that. It’s something I got to do.
Q. Overall what do you think has been not working for you at this tournament?
MILOS RAONIC: Haven’t served well. I’ve been too passive on the court. I’ve been trying to beat the two guys playing their tennis, and that’s not going to work for me.
Q. You said you played the two matches with the tactics of your opponents. How do you think you need to play your next match if it’s to reflect your game?
MILOS RAONIC: I have to be more aggressive. I have to go for more rather than just play relatively down the middle.
I’m getting short balls, but I’m developing them if I go hard down the middle. I’m not stretching my opponents most of the time. I don’t know exactly what the stats are, but I’m sure I have a terrible minus record unforced errors to winners at this moment. That’s not how I’m going to give myself a possibility to win.
Q. In the last game you hit a couple really fantastic shots and a couple real clunkers. That must be frustrating for you. Do you have any explanation or is it that you’re going for it?
MILOS RAONIC: I had to go for it. There was no time to lose. I had my back up against the wall. I had to sort of put all my cards down and go and play.
There was too much up and down. It was poor of me to lose that 1 All, my serve, being 40 Love up. After that point I started going for it. I created a few Love 30 possibilities doing that. I just didn’t make the most of them.
Q. For yourself, along with Kei and Marin, this is a whole new experience, playing the season ending championship. I think Kei is the only one who scored one win. How much does that have a bearing on the way you’ve approached this or the way you’re playing?
MILOS RAONIC: You go out there and you treat every match like it’s a single elimination tournament. There’s no other way to do it. If you go out there hoping that, okay, you can lose a match and maybe still get through, things can only go poorly from there on.
So obviously I think if I can put myself in this situation again, I hope I can do better. But I don’t think that’s been nearly as much of an issue as the way I’ve executed my game and the way I’ve stepped up to play.
Q. Intrinsically the speed of the court would be the same. How does the huge area around the court play with the speed? At the French Open, people say that center court plays slower because the area around the court is so big. Is that a factor?
MILOS RAONIC: I think it’s a visual factor. I don’t think it really makes a difference on numbers. When you sort of have more of a space to work with, you never feel like you’re sort of pressed up against the court and so forth. Just visual and optic space, you feel like there is more space, you feel there is more time.
In Paris you feel you can go further back if need be, buy yourself time that way. Whereas if you’re playing on Court 7 or any other court in Paris, you feel like you have to sort of stay up closer. Obviously the further back you are, naturally you have more time ’cause the ball’s got to travel a longer distance.
