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TENNIS MASTERS CUPNovember 17, 2007Mark KnowlesDaniel NestorSHANGHAI, CHINA THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Second final in two years. Surprising or totally expected? DANIEL NESTOR: Shocked (smiling). No, I'm just kidding. No, we've had a good year. We won a slam, had some good results. I think we've dealt with adversity really well this week. Had some, you know, not so good moments of play, especially me on my serve. But I bounced back. Mark's bounced back with me. I think we're playing really solid for the most part. Q. How important was it to get over these guys that have beaten you, what, four out of six or something like that? DANIEL NESTOR: Yeah, it's important. Those guys are tough. They're a great team. They beat us maybe one or two more times than we've beaten them in the last couple years. But, you know, I think we beat them here in the semifinals last year, too. We're just two pretty even teams. Just a matter of one or two points, who is a little tougher mentally, who catches a few breaks. That's the super tiebreaker for you. Q. It really was down to the wire in the super tiebreak. At the critical moments, you tended to take the upper hand. Does that mean you feel you are really in terrific form, rise to the big occasion? MARK KNOWLES: We're a great team, obviously. We play well together. We complement each other well. Things were clicking today. Maybe we could have won in the second set, but they played great points on the match points. We have a lot of experience which I think helps us in tight moments. We just try to play it one point at a time and really execute our game plan. We were able to do that. Sometimes they played great shots that sometimes you just have to say too good. But we're a great, experienced team. Usually we come through in moments like that. Q. You're in the semifinals again. Which pair would you prefer to take on tomorrow? How optimistic and confident are you in terms of winning the tournament? MARK KNOWLES: The old cliché answer: we don't really have a preference to who we play. We feel like if we play our game and we're executing, we're going to be good on the day against anybody. We really don't get caught up in who's going to win the next match. We like the way we're playing. We played a great match today. We look to play even better in the final. We know we're going to have to play a great match to win the title. Q. How ironic would it be to win the final considering all the developments this year? Would that be the weirdest thing ever? DANIEL NESTOR: I wouldn't say it's the weirdest thing ever. I just think it would be a nice way to end this year because we've had some good moments and we've never won this tournament before. I think it would be pretty fitting. As we said, we've lost two finals here. We lost two finals at the French before we won. Hopefully that's a good omen. Q. How do you feel with the new rules in the doubles? The match goes faster. Do you like that? DANIEL NESTOR: Well, the fact that it goes faster we like because we're both older, so the shorter the better for us (smiling). You know, it's tough mentally. There's a lot more pressure, a lot more big points. I think we're all in favor of no-ad scoring. But super tiebreakers doesn't really seem like a fair way to always determine the better team. But we've become accustomed to it. I think the fans are warming up to it. It's entertaining the fans; not just about our needs. If that's the case, then we've dealt with it and we're prepared to continue playing under these rules. We'd like to see maybe some change in the singles scoring, too. I think no-ad scoring would make it quite a bit more exciting. Q. We heard Daniel's thoughts on it being a fitting way to end the partnership. I'd be interested in your thoughts. The only unfinished business would be a Wimbledon title. You'd have three slams and a Masters Cup title. Your thoughts on how important it is for you to win this title. MARK KNOWLES: Yeah, obviously it's one of the titles we've always wanted to win. We've been in position a few times. We've got ourselves back in position. As I said before, we're a great team. Our record shows it over the years. We've had a very good year, a great year. No. 2 in the world. Won some big events. We've got one more match to go. Really excited for the final. Try to go out with a bang. It would be a great way to finish the year. End of FastScripts |
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