WIMBLEDON

July 6, 2001

Ai Sugiyama

MODERATOR: Questions, please.

KIM CLIJSTERS: It's my best result ever in doubles. I mean, this is the second time that Ai and I played together. It's great. We've been playing well this tournament. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the finals here, yeah.

KIM CLIJSTERS: It's because you were two on the court. It's because you can talk. Yeah, I mean, it's a teamwork. When you're playing like a singles match, it's more individual, you don't have anyone to talk to, unless you talk to yourself. It's nice. We laugh on the court. We make jokes. It's relaxing a little bit, yeah.

AI SUGIYAMA: Well, we are good friend, not only on the court, outside the court, too. That makes me more enjoyable playing with Kim. And also when we are playing, while we are playing, we talk, as Kim said. For me, playing doubles with her is just great. We having great time together.

KIM CLIJSTERS: We played together last year in San Diego. We lost to Testud-Schett or Testud-Shaughnessy. Testud-Chanda Rubin. We played a good match, like 7-5 in the third. That was both because we didn't have a doubles partner. We played well. I don't know, like we spoke together at the French.

AI SUGIYAMA: Before that.

KIM CLIJSTERS: Yeah, and then we decided to start here.

KIM CLIJSTERS: I played her.

AI SUGIYAMA: I have, too.

KIM CLIJSTERS: Never played against them. I'll have to listen to Ai.

AI SUGIYAMA: Yeah, I play them couple times before and I know how they playing, where we have to serve, how they going to do when we hitting like sometimes when they go to up the line a lot, so we watch it.

KIM CLIJSTERS: She said we had to watch the lob, a lot of lobs. I think you saw that, probably.

AI SUGIYAMA: Yeah. Even if you waiting for the lob, they still good at it. Yeah, I think we play good today.

KIM CLIJSTERS: Domo-arigato. That means thank you very much (laughter).

AI SUGIYAMA: No.

KIM CLIJSTERS: Yes, you do. Dank u wel.

AI SUGIYAMA: That's it (laughter).