TMS - THE ERICSSON OPEN

March 24, 2000

Jim Courier

ATP: Questions, please.

JIM COURIER: This is the golden twilight for a certain period of American tennis. Hopefully it's the dawning of a new era. What are you going to do? I've been on the tour, this is my 13th year. Pete and Chang the same. Andre has been on for even longer. I think this is his 15th year. People can't expect us to be around forever. Hopefully we'll be around competitively for a few more years. It's kind of an enjoy-it-while-you-can time in our careers because certainly you start to get limited physically when you get into your 30s.

JIM COURIER: I really think that since last year's Davis Cup in Birmingham, that people have been a lot more behind me, I guess would be the word. They've been real supportive of me since then. Not that they weren't before, but I think they've been more vocal about it. I think maybe that touched them in a way that they hadn't been touched by any of my other performances. That was nice. It's been a nice ride since then.

JIM COURIER: Not at all.

JIM COURIER: That was one of the most visible performances I've had in recent years. It's kind of one of those things where people go, "Oh, yeah, he's still playing." It just reminds them.

JIM COURIER: Absolutely.

JIM COURIER: It may be dead in the general public. Hopefully it's going to start breathing again very soon. But it still touches a special place in the core tennis fans' hearts. I hear a lot from them, just a lot of appreciativeness of the fact that I've been playing Davis Cup for so many years.

JIM COURIER: I was in the beginning, yeah.

JIM COURIER: The chances of a class like ours coming out are probably pretty slim for the immediate future. We've had probably six to seven guys roughly within two or three years of the same age of each other who have been in Grand Slam finals or won Grand Slams. If you throw in David Wheaton, Mal Washington, Todd Martin, you're talking about guys who all grew up playing Juniors together. The chances of that happening I think are pretty slim, just in light of how deep the competition is worldwide. But we're hoping that someone like Andy Roddick or Mardy Fish, who got wildcards here, pushed through. They're certainly on the up-and-coming swing. Guys like James Blake, hopefully they're going to make a push. We need them to. Americans, we're very spoiled as sports fans. We expect to always have people at the top. When we don't, we don't pay attention. We don't care about Formula 1 racing because we don't have any Formula 1 racers. We don't really care about soccer because we're not a great soccer nation. We're just very focused on what we're good at. So if we're not good at men's tennis, could be a struggle.

JIM COURIER: I do. I certainly do. I let them come stay at my house and beat me up in practice as much as they want (laughter). I like having the young guys around. I think I have a lot of information that they might need. I'm happy to impart it to them.

JIM COURIER: A lot of guys come through my house. I'm like a frat house for wayward ATP pros.

JIM COURIER: I don't think it's either one way or the other. I think I am that way just because that's the way I am. I remember that certainly I had some hits with Mac when I would come through New York City when I was 20, 21, when I was on his last days playing competitively on the ATP Tour. He was very generous with his comments on what I should and shouldn't do, work on, let me stay at his apartment in New York. I really appreciated that. Being at Bollettieri's, I got to hit with Krickstein, Arias, guys like that all the time. I had my fair share of contact with the pros when I was younger.

JIM COURIER: We've heard about it.

JIM COURIER: I don't know the whole story. I don't really know what's been going on behind the scenes as to what led to that. I don't think it's fair for me to comment, other than to say David was certainly doing a fine job this time last year - almost really fine, but not quite fine enough (laughter).

JIM COURIER: Just another good player coming up. They're coming out of the woodwork - it's like termites. They're just everywhere right now. I think he's got a lot of potential. He's quite young, apparently.

JIM COURIER: I mean, I think that right now, experience is probably his biggest weakness. Just needs to play and play and play.

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