Here’s the Andy Murray 2014 French Open Interview Transcript. 6 June:
Q. Andy, it felt like you brought the best out of your opponent today. Do you agree with that?
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, he played a great match. He missed hardly any balls. He served very well.
I mean, his forehand especially with the conditions the way they were today, was incredibly hard to control the ball. As soon as he was inside the court, I mean, he was hitting the ball so close to the line.
Yeah, he played great tennis.
Q. You played four and a half hours more than Rafa. Do you think that was too much to play your best tennis and have a chance against him today?
ANDY MURRAY: I don’t know, to be honest. If it was, I’ve only got myself to blame, because I was in control of a lot of the matches that went longer than maybe they should have been. So if that did have anything to do with it, it was completely my fault.
But, yeah, ideally playing against him on this surface, you know, the way he’s hitting the ball today, you have to do a lot of running, chase a lot of balls down. I couldn’t get enough back.
Q. You had particular trouble getting into his serve. Was he doing something different? Why was that the case today?
ANDY MURRAY: He served well and I didn’t return well. Simple. He served very close to the lines. Ball was coming through the court quicker today.
Yeah, my returns were timing was off on the returns. You know, also I think it is also easy to just sort of say, Oh, you know, he served well and I missed quite a lot of returns.
But the problem is if you don’t do anything with the return, I mean, he was just battering the next ball into the corner. So you need to try and do something with his return.
And, yeah, maybe I was going for a bit too much. Then when I missed a couple in a row I would get a bit tentative.
Yeah, that was it.
Q. At what point of the match did you sense that it was going to be a very difficult afternoon?
ANDY MURRAY: Well, I knew it was going to be a difficult afternoon obviously before I went on the court. I was expecting a lot of long rallies. I was expecting to have to do a lot of running. And, yeah, I just yeah, I mean, it was a tough day for me. It was a bad, bad day.
Yeah, I’ll need to bounce back quickly from it, because I’m not particularly happy with the way I played today.
Q. You’re a big competitor. How is it to deal with it on the court feeling that maybe you couldn’t find any way to really compete? How do you switch back to grass after such a loss?
ANDY MURRAY: That’s a good question. It’s difficult, because, yeah, I normally strike the ball fairly cleanly. Today I was mishitting a lot of balls. It was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to play better and better as the match went on.
Yeah, in some ways you start trying too hard, and it doesn’t always appear that way. But you want to do stuff too badly, and you end up making more mistakes and things get worse.
Yeah, I never want to say forget about matches like this, but obviously the grass court season starts in a couple of days and I need to switch my mind to that.
