Federer is in a class of his own. |
Got the first break late in the fifth set, then just didn't close it out at 40-15, ... Just a matter of trying to hang in there. I felt like I was returning pretty well the whole match. That sort of kept me in it...I still felt like there was a lot of areas of my game that weren't quite clicking today. |
He came out swinging early. Once I got a feel for the match, I was in control. |
He doesn't give you cheap points the way he did four years ago and that's the reason why he's improved so much and he's the standout No.1 at the moment, |
He played a lot looser than he's normally played in the past. He's playing more like in practice, where he has always been a great player where he's very flashy and doesn't take it all seriously the whole time. I think he's adopted that a little more in his matches. |
He served extremely well, |
He spat in my direction; he apologized at the net after the match, and I accepted his apology. I don't think it's the right thing, and it's not good for the game. It's unfortunate because we were having a good dogfight match out there. We were going for it. It's sad that something like that happens. But I said, 'Just forget about it, mate'. |
He took his chances a lot better than I did. You never like to lose. It's disappointing because in practice I feel like I've been hitting the ball great. |
He was just bunting the serve back, waiting for a short ball to pounce on and I got the perfect reply that I wanted, ... If I had served better it would have given me more opportunities to mix it up a lot more. |
He wasn't making a lot of easy mistakes so I tried to put more pressure on him and I was able to do that. |
He's a hell of a shot-maker, the best shot-maker I've ever seen. He can pull the trigger anywhere on the court. No one's really been able to put him under pressure for the last couple of years. |
He's a tough competitor out there. He's got a lot of flashy shots and a lot of weapons out there. I'd never hit a ball against him, so it took me a while to get in and read his game a little bit...I thought he'd make a lot more errors than he did. |
He's a tough player, especially on this kind of surface. I just had to hang in there, try and grind him down. It wasn't the prettiest tennis, hopefully I can pick up on it. |
He's going to be tough. I'll have to step it up again. |
He's going to have a lot more pressure on him as well this year to try and back up what an incredible year he had last year. That's not going to be an easy thing for him to do. |