Brisbane - Interview transcrite - Match vs Zverev

January 6, 2017

Rafael Nadal

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

R. NADAL/M. Zverev

6-1, 6-1

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You looked very good tonight. How pleased were you with the way you played?
RAFAEL NADAL: Yeah, happy. No, I played a great match, I think. Difficult say something negative, because in general I saw after, on the video screen, like, 30 winners and just a few unforced errors.

Returning very well, I think. A lot of great passing shots. Not, you know, mistakes. Only thing, I am not sure about my percentage of serves. I think was not that good tonight, was the only thing. But for the rest, I think I played great.

Q. You must be pleased, particularly going into what will be a really tough match against Milos tomorrow.
RAFAEL NADAL: For sure. Yeah, he's one of the toughest opponents on tour today, without a doubt. He's the third in the world.

His serve is huge, and he improved a lot from the baseline, too. It's a match that you cannot do mistakes if you want to really have any chance.

You need to be really focused with your serve and then try to play aggressive on the return. I gonna try to make it happen, knowing that it's going to be extremely difficult match.

Q. You probably haven't heard, but today an 18-year-old player has been charged with match fixing in a minor tournament in Victoria. As a senior player, particularly after last year's episode at the Australian Open, does it bother you that things like that are still happening in the game?
RAFAEL NADAL: I didn't know anything about that. I didn't heard.

But, no, if he's arrested is because we are doing the right job, you know. That's the most important thing. At the same time is obviously negative, always in the first month of the season starts to happen. Talking stories about our sport always before the Australian Open, and that's something, you know, I have been a lot of years on tour and happen almost every year. You get tired about this kind of stuff, but the most important thing is fight against these kind of things. And he's young?

Q. 18. Yeah.
RAFAEL NADAL: That's even the worst part.

Q. Do you hope that there can be a life ban for situations like that? Do you think tennis is doing enough to combat match fixing?
RAFAEL NADAL: I think -- you know, I have, being honest, I have been on the tour for 12, 13 years, and I really don't spend a lot of time in the lower categories of our events, you know, in challengers and in futures. I spent just months, so I cannot talk much about it.

But on the professional ATP World Tour, I can talk. I don't know if this happened here, but for sure is not happening very often, no? If it happened, it has been just very few times, because I see every match people fights, you know, people don't want to lose.

I don't see matches that people give up or throw the match, you know. Maybe the lower tournaments maybe is another story, but I don't want to talk about it, because I really don't know much.

But I know in Spain it happened a couple of weeks ago that few people gets arrested, a group that dedicates to that. And it's great that, you know, I think that the sport is doing the right things to fight against that and, you know, all the people that are not doing the things right, now they are in trouble.