PC World

By TennisWorld Contributing Editor Andrew Burton

The Indian Wells Tennis Garden, where this tournament is being held, has a players/media garden just outside the canteen, near the main entrance to the facility.  I went down for supper today, and walked out into the garden.  As I sat down, I saw Dinara Safina at one table with two male coaches or hitting partners, and Svetlana Kuznetsova at another table.  And five yards further on, outside a white picket fence, some spectators stared at the players.  I wondered for a moment what it must be like to be stared at intently while you're finishing your yogurt.

Players learn to be on guard with the public, and the majority of them are on guard when we visit with them for 15 minutes or so after a match.  There's actually a spectrum of responses.  Some players have clearly been coached by a tennis playing cousin of Crash Davis ("I'm just taking one day at a time, trying to do my best, very happy to be playing in Indian Wells, yadda, yadda...").  Some of this goes down to the fact that English is typically a second or even a third language for most players, and the younger players have had less time to feel comfortable delivering strong opinions in an unfamiliar tongue.  Stanislaus Wawrinka is much less comfortable in English than the one higher ranked Swiss players, and his responses are typically brief and to the point.

Ivan Ljubicic, who turns 30 tomorrow, has been around the block a few times, and he gave a delightful press conference after his third set TB win over Igor Andreev.  Ljubicic comes across as a guy you'd enjoy having a beer with - he's having a good tournament, he's cheerful and articulate.  Ljubicic doesn't deflect questions about the difficulty both players had with Fergus Murphy, and he's witty and warm when asked whether he'll be giving No Coach Daddy Roger Federer advice about bringing an infant on tour (it's the first tournament for his four and a half month old son, who apparently gets over jet lag faster than his Dad).

Marat Safin treats press conferences with resigned good humor, or resigned bad humor - you'll guess that the constant is the air of resignation surrounding Safin.  Is he retiring at the end of the season?  "Well, there's a thousand times I have to answer this question.  Yeah, plan for the end of the year and I will see.  But for the moment, I will stick to my plan and I want to make it the last one."  Why has he had wonderful highs and pretty big lows?  "it's me.  It's my tennis.  It's my career.  Everybody's different, and that's how I am.  That's a good question after ten years of my career, huh?"

Andy Roddick's 2007 AO SF press conference, following a ruthless beatdown by his arch-nemesis Federer, has legendary status.  Roddick has been playing well and winning so far in Indian Wells, a happy combination.  He's a very quick thinker in his press conferences, and I've rarely heard him give a canned reply.  He had an interesting workout against Daniel Koellerer, who frequently stepped right on the line between competitiveness and gamesmanship in their R32 match.

Roddick, at least has the benefit of the American crowd behind him.  Novak Djokovic hasn't been feeling the love recently, and it will be interesting to hear how the crowd gets into their match (my guess is on Friday evening) after Djokovic went medieval on Roddick in his post-match interview with Michael Barkan.  In the last two matches Djokovic has played the crowd has been noticeably warmer in its applause for his defeated opponents, Tommy Haas and Stanislas Wawrinka, and I'll take a bet that most of the crowd couldn't spell Wawrinka if spotted all the consonants.

Djokovic likes crowd support: his face lit up this evening when he was asked to give an example of how Serbia now lives for tennis:

Roger Federer approaches his press conferences with wary seriousness.  Today, he was asked again about his tears after the January five set defeat in Melbourne, and he chose not to brush the question aside or toss off a few banalities:

Nadal's command of English has improved in the last year, and he no longer seems a bundle of energy behind the microphone - he's relaxed into the role of world no 1.  What Nadal is wary of is being seen as taking wins for granted, as in this response to a question I posed following his beatdown to Michael Berrer:

The transcripts are provided by ASAP Sports, courtesy of Julie and Linda, two former court stenographers. We sometimes take their services for granted, but when you open a newspaper or click on a site reporting from one of these tournaments, it's their work you're reading.  There's a lot of IT at work: wireless links between a laptop and stenographer, with audio backup.

English conversations are held first, for about 15 minutes, then the ATP rep asks for the last two questions in English.  Then it's the turn of the player's home language journalists.

Most of the conversations are relaxed, since only major seeds are asked to attend after defeats.  When this happens, the majority of the questions are sympathetic rather than adversarial (though I heard some shockers in Toronto from general sports reporters).  Many of the journalists travel from tournament to tournament, and become familiar faces to the players.  If not exactly friends, there's some shared feelings.  This was apparent when Jelena Jankovic came in after her early round loss to Pavlyuchenkova.  Jankovic was down on herself throughout the interview: the transcripts only capture the words, so you don't hear the softness of the question, or the ten second pause (which felt like an age) before the player replied:

For a moment, the guard was completely down, and we could all see the struggling young woman up close.  We rely on the media to bring us inside the white picket fence, to bring us in tight to those we normally admire from a distance.  Occasionally, you can feel just a bit too close.