AUSTRALIAN OPEN
Date: 2006-01-16

AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 16, 2006

Andy Roddick
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
The Moderator First question, please.

Question How much did it come to your mind, the loss to Muller in the US Open first round today?
Answer It didn't.

Question Not at all?
Answer No. I mean, entirely different tournaments. I mean, different circumstances. You know, I stopped thinking about that a while ago. I'm not going to carry that with me for a long time.

Question How pleased were you with your performance tonight?
Answer I felt good because, you know, even the points I was losing, I felt like I was losing them on my terms. I thought I was hitting the ball big and attacking. It felt clean today.

Question Do you like having a match that is that straightforward at this stage of a tournament, or would you prefer more of a tussle?
Answer You know what, if I would have had a tough one, I would have said, yeah, it's great to have a tough one. Since I won easy... It's typical, a win is a win in my mind. Tough, easy, you kind of just want to keep advancing.

Question What about your serve? For you, a low number of aces. Were you happy with the quality of your serving?
Answer I don't really pay too much attention to aces. I like to get my first serve percentage up above 60, 65%. That's the number I look at. I think it was at 58 tonight. That's a little low. But it did get better as the match progressed. I felt like I was hitting them well. I was missing them by an inch or two. You know, that's probably the shot I worry about least, though.

Question Any particular areas of your game that you thought you could work on, improve on?
Answer I felt like I just maybe lapsed in concentration a couple times. Like I played the big points pretty well, and then, you know, I'd be up 30-Love sometimes and kind of miss a couple shots. But I guess you'd rather have it that way than, you know, the other. But overall I thought it was a pretty good performance.

Question Do you like playing that late at night? Would you rather play earlier in the day?
Answer You know, it was a little long just because the women's match went a little ways before us. But either way, I mean, I know going into here and in the US, I've played a lot of night matches historically. I kind of know to expect it. You get kind of anxious waiting around all day, but that probably goes for both players.

Question You said coming into the event that it was the best prepared you'd felt for a Grand Slam. Do you still go by that?
Answer Yeah. Hasn't changed since yesterday.

Question Kooyong you were thrilled with your form.
Answer It wasn't so much Kooyong. It was just the work that was put in leading up to the event. I don't think you can judge your preparation on two matches at Kooyong. I think it has to do with the six or seven, eight weeks of work that you kind of put in preceding. I was pleased with that because I had a solid window that I could kind of put in my work on a daily basis and kind of know what was ahead of me as opposed to last year I had a pretty quick turnaround after the Davis Cup final. Just as I felt like I was relaxed, we were right back into it. I felt like I had a little bit more of a purpose this off-season.

Question Slightly longer than normal as well, a couple extra weeks?
Answer It was, because I had a back injury at the end of the year, so I missed Shanghai. About the time that Shanghai was finishing, I was healthy and started training again. Whereas if I played Shanghai, probably would have taken another 10 days, two weeks off after that, so I actually got a two-week head start on it.

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