TMS - THE ERICSSON OPEN

March 23, 2000

Paul Goldstein

GREG SHARKO: Paul wins his first match here at the Ericsson Open, moving into the second round where he'll take on Fernando Meligeni of Brazil.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: It's been a couple. I had a good run down at Delray, definitely got off on the right foot here. Like Greg said, this is my first win here. I don't know if I can claim it as my second home court yet.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: Yes. I'd say it would start all the way back at Australia where I had a really good match against Lleyton Hewitt. Lost that first round match, but played really well. Lleyton plays a similar game as I play. He's doing it at the elite right now. When I played him, he was about 14-0 on the year. He's doing better, as well as anyone in the world. I took some things from that, then the second week of the Australian Open I played a Challenger in Hawaii, actually won the tournament. That was a start. I would agree and say that Zimbabwe was another step. John McEnroe, when he called me, he said, You're doing some good things, Goldy, but I think being around the guys could help get you to the next level. I definitely think that there's a lot to that. It's the first chance I had to interact with Andre for a week. He was on cloud nine, coming off the Australian Open win, his attitude was awesome, so I fed off that. Working out with him, he put me into traction there. I came off a flight from Hawaii, about 40 hours of traveling, two hours of sleep, went out with him for my first workout as his practice partner. The 56,000 (sic) feet of altitude, he diced me. They couldn't get my heart rate below 95 for two hours. They were worried about me. Just sitting around the dinner table, sitting down at 8:00 at night for dinner, we would just kind of hang till 11:30. You have Mac, Andre, Gilbert. You have one guy who is at the elite in '76, '77, Andre is No. 1 in the world in the year 2000, constant playing, so you have 23 years of good stories and talking shop. I'd say I learned a lot from that. Just being a fly on the wall in those conversations, it was pretty cool.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: "You guys?" Yeah, they did, the USTA did.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. Chef Dave.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: He took the first ball I fed him. John said to me, Goldy, I want you to be warmed up in order to warm Andre up. I don't want you cold. First ball I fed to him, he takes it Mach 10. I'm working as hard as I can possibly work for the first ten minutes of the hit just to keep the ball going. Granted, it was altitude, the ball was flying and so on. The second you step on the court, the second Andre steps on the court, he's ready to go. He's getting the most out of every shot in practice from the second he starts on the court. It's not 15 minutes in, Let's start hitting the ball a little bit. He might only spend 16, 17 minutes on court, but it's a workout. That was one thing. Actually he had some suggestions for me, you know, after we played a set. He's like, "Goldy, man, these are what your strengths are. You got to be disciplined out there. You know, your strength is that you're going to be more disciplined than some of these other guys and you're not going to change direction of the ball just for the sake of changing the direction of the ball. You might mix in a serve-and-volley, but you're not coming going to come in too early. You're going to be disciplined out there. I think I took that to heart more than anything else, not only him saying it, but reflecting back on my match with Hewitt. The critical times I thought I was the one, and it's not a lack of being aggressive, it's just I was the one that was being aggressive at the wrong times, rushing at the wrong time, critical moments. That was the difference in the match, one or two points here and there. Having Andre say that to me, saying that's how you're going to be your best, then reflecting on the match with Hewitt, that's something that I've tried to execute since then. It's been valuable. It's worked.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: No, nothing, no. Didn't change a grip or change a stroke or shave my head or anything like that.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: A little bit, at the right time. Like I said, and Lleyton does the same thing, he's disciplined, he's disciplined. But if a I'm being disciplined, winning, counterpunching, which I think I'm pretty strong at, is the counterpunching, then a guy says to me, "All right, Goldstein, what can you do?" Play rope-a-dope with me, that's when I've got to be able to step in and end the point. The guy says, "I try to be aggressive, he's beating me. I try to make him do something, he's beating me." I think that's what Lleyton is doing right now. There's sometimes when guys play rope-a-dope against me, and that's where I need to take a page out of Andre and step up on the court, take the ball early.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: I think so. Granted, I've been on tour for 20 months, but I'm still increasing my comfort level at every tournament. I don't feel like an established veteran, but it's certainly been much better than my first tour tournament. In Australia I felt so uncomfortable, I couldn't even find someone to warm me up for my match. I went out there cold. But, like I said, with Brad, if you see Brad around now, because he was there all week, might hit with Andre. I was there with Chris Woodruff all week. We played doubles last week, playing again here. It is a continuing relationship. It's got to be. All the other countries are doing it. The Americans need to stick together and feed off each other. I'd love for the young Americans to use Andre, to use Pete a little more. It would be great. These guys are doing it the best that it can be done. We need to follow and take some pages from them.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: Yes, he was great.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: I've been to his house once before. I was going to Orlando to train in any case. He lives there. We were in Memphis. My plan was already to go. I lost Wednesday. Tried to get out Thursday. There were no flights down there; impossible to get out. My flight was originally Friday. Jimbo called me Wednesday night about midnight and said, "Goldy, I lost tonight, I'm taking the private jet down tomorrow. Why don't you come along. There's extra room." I was planning on staying there, so I was planning on practicing in Orlando for the week.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: I was there for like ten days, I think, doing a lot of fitness.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: Jimbo actually left. He left. He didn't hit too much. He went out of town, had some other engagements.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: I guess so, yeah.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: I don't know. Maybe you should be talking to Jimbo about this. I don't know if it's my place.

PAUL GOLDSTEIN: Guys who have been doing it have been Jim, Alex O'Brien, Jonathan Stark, Todd Martin is fantastic with it. Andre was awesome that week in Zimbabwe. Again, it was the first chance I had to interact with him. He was phenomenal, like I said, pulling me aside after we played the set, having suggestions for me. We talked tennis a little bit. When those guys were talking, I kind of didn't feel comfortable saying much, just listening. But Andre asked me, we started talking about my match with Hewitt, getting insides from that was great. Andre is not around as much. The demands on his time are owe extraordinary, it's tough. When the opportunity was there, he was great. I appreciated it.