US OPEN

September 8, 2000

Ellis Ferreira

MODERATOR: Questions for Rick and Ellis.

ELLIS FERREIRA: Yeah. You know, a typical doubles match. Pretty tight down to the wire. I felt that the windy conditions were definitely -- I was struggling against that, and the fact that Mirnyi was serving huge. That was not helping (smiling).

ELLIS FERREIRA: Well, you know, Rick --

. RICK LEACH: We were just talking about it. Max wound up to hit a normal shot and ended up hitting a lob. I had no chance of getting it. I was just asking ^ Ellis if he was even close to the ball. He said no. It's too bad that it comes down to one or two points.

ELLIS FERREIRA: He took like a big swing. Your weight is going forward.

RICK LEACH: Plus it was against the wind. That was just too good. They did serve very well in the tiebreaker. I mean, I only got actually one hit on a ball the whole tiebreaker. All the other ones were aces. I couldn't even get close to them. I mean, everybody played well. It just came down to one or two points.

RICK LEACH: Well, you know, he's a fighter. He returns very well. He put a lot of pressure on us. I've got to hand it to the guy for being out there. I really respect the fact that he played in the doubles. Hopefully, it didn't take too much out of him for tomorrow. I think it's actually good preparation. He got a real tough match. He'll be ready to go right from the start tomorrow. He's got so much talent and fight, who knows, maybe he can be No. 1.

ELLIS FERREIRA: I was really impressed with, you know, the way he was moving, you know, in the doubles. I think that's definitely only going to improve his singles game by, you know, being able to come to ^ thenet. He's obviously comfortable doing it, so it can only help his singles.

RICK LEACH: I think he's volleying much better now, too. It probably comes from playing doubles.

RICK LEACH: I think that brings a lot of excitement to the game. It's kind of like how McEnroe used to be, get kind of psyched up and in your face. I have no problem with that. I think it's fun to watch.

ELLIS FERREIRA: The big thing, too, is Lleyton is doing it because of his own excitement. He's not making it up. Sometimes people go out there and ^ chest-butt and do everything the first point. It's ^ contrived, it's not real. We have no problem with a guy being excited about hitting a good shot on breakpoint. I think that creates good excitement.

ELLIS FERREIRA: (Nodding head.)

RICK LEACH: They're both great tennis players. They make a good combination. Max covers the net well, and Lleyton covers the back, returns well. They make a very tough combination. I knew we had our hands full going into it, just from watching their other matches. You know, it was just unfortunate to lose a real tight match like that in the finals.

ELLIS FERREIRA: No, I definitely wanted to win the match. You know, one thing that Rick's taught me is when you make a final or a semi, that you don't kind of just rest with that, you should really always shoot to win the event. At the moment I'm very disappointed that we gave it away. I felt that I made a little too many errors today than I normally did. It's great to get to the finals, but I think that we really can and should have won the match. It's a bit of a consolation.

ELLIS FERREIRA: We have four, including the World Championships in India.

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