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WIMBLEDON

July 6, 2007

Tomas Berdych

LONDON, ENGLAND

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Good opportunity for you coming in. Conditions have a big impact on your game, your mentality today?
TOMAS BERDYCH: Yeah, of course. I mean, the conditions -- I don't like these kind of conditions on the court. I think it's not good for tennis at all.
It depends on the player who can play with these condition better. It's not me. I have still a lot to learn how to play in such a windy conditions and we will see.

Q. Does that make it a bigger achievement to win Wimbledon, or does it make it a lesser achievement, that you have to deal with all the conditions? Does it take anything away from the guy who wins or add something to him?
TOMAS BERDYCH: No, I think like the conditions are not good here. All the things what they did here, like Sunday didn't play and all these things, just to let like if you winning now you going to play four days a row, like best-of-five sets.
I don't think this is good. I think for Rafa it's maybe kind of advantage that he's playing every day and then he can play five sets, then he's playing every single day better and better.

Q. You stayed with him in the first set. Afterwards it fell away. What happened?
TOMAS BERDYCH: I just lost my serve in the beginning of each set. That's it. I don't think there was something special. He was playing well. Yeah, I had some chances in the first set, but then when we was on our serves, it was tough to make the set or win it.

Q. Do you think he can stop Federer?
TOMAS BERDYCH: Maybe these conditions, yeah. I think Roger -- I think he is the best on the grass. We will see in the final, but you never know.

Q. After the era of Borg, it seemed to be players who were very good on clay were not so good on grass. How good is Nadal on grass?
TOMAS BERDYCH: He has to be good. He was final here last year. Now he's in the semifinal. He's a great player. I think this time the grass is not what it was like in the past. It was just for a players who was just serve and volley and that's it. Now the grass is much slower.
You can see in the draw is nobody who can play this style, because if you gonna play serve and volley then it's not many chance to win some of the matches here.

Q. Do you think he has special talents that make him different from other players?
TOMAS BERDYCH: I mean, he's great condition, well running on the court. He's not making a lot of mistakes. He's trying to play similar game like on the clay. Yeah, he is well talented. He's second in the world. If Roger is not in this time, he's going to be first.
Yeah, he's a great player.

Q. Rafa said yesterday he pinpointed the serve as key to performing well on grass. Did you notice anything different with his serve? Has it improved?
TOMAS BERDYCH: I mean, in these conditions you cannot do anything because, I mean, my serve is advantage for me and today doesn't work because it's impossible in this weather to good serve and then all the games is going down.

Q. How bad was it out there? What did it feel like with the weather?
TOMAS BERDYCH: It was windy.

Q. Is that the windiest conditions you've played in ever?
TOMAS BERDYCH: I don't know, maybe. It was really windy, yeah.

Q. The topspin play of Rafael was hurting you so much because of the wind?
TOMAS BERDYCH: It's not higher, but if you're playing more topspin it's much better for the control of the ball if you are playing with the wind. So then when he's playing with so much topspin he's doing less mistakes.
If he's playing on the other side and he's much stronger than me, he can still hit the balls hard.

Q. Rafa's second serves, he was serving a hundred miles. Topspin seemed to hurt you.
TOMAS BERDYCH: But if you're going to wait for the ball there, the wind move the direction of the ball, you cannot do anything. We play so many times like on the clay, on the hard court. I think especially hard court is for the spin much -- it gets the spin much more than here on the grass.
It wasn't the reason. Yeah, he's serving well with the left hand, with the spin like you said, but not too much helps on the grass.

Q. Do you have to change your routine between points because Nadal has such a long preparation to serve?
TOMAS BERDYCH: I don't know why different. I mean, I'm doing the same all the time since I start to play tennis. I think he's doing the same, too. We are different persons. That's what he's doing and I'm doing something different.

Q. You've had a good couple of weeks. What does it mean going for you into the hard court season? You're going to play a full schedule?
TOMAS BERDYCH: It was great few weeks, this and the week before. I won the first title on the grass. Quarterfinal here. It's quite good.
Then the hard court season, it's going to be just the tournament in Montréal and Cincinnati, then US Open.

End of FastScripts

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