Saturday, July 7, 2018

Feliciano Lopez Wimbledon Second round press conference

Feliciano Lopez Wimbledon Second round press conference
Feliciano Lopez Wimbledon Second round press conference

Feliciano Lopez speaks to the media after his 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 defeat against Juan Martin del Potro
Q. At 36, how are you able to still maintain such a high level of performance in your tennis?
FELICIANO LOPEZ: I don't know. Seeing the way I played today, I don't think I'm playing my best tennis (smiling).

No, I have been talking about this in the last few days that I was just, you know, trying to stay healthy, you know, these last five or six years, because I knew it's going to be very important for me to be fit, you know, in order to play against the best players in the world and in order to be able to challenge them.

That's what I realized once I got to the 30s, and that's what I did. You know, it's a lot of things that somehow, you know, I managed to put all of them together to make the success. You know, that's what I did basically.

Q. Do you think this physical conditioning support for tennis players, the quality of that has gone up a lot over the last 15 years over your career?
FELICIANO LOPEZ: Of course. The fitness part is probably the most important part of the game right now. Everybody, 90% of the players or more are very fit and very strong and very powerful.

Q. Overall, it's like that's almost become even more professional than it was, say, 10 or 15 years ago?
FELICIANO LOPEZ: Of course, of course. But every sport has become more professional lately. This is normal. You have more things to recover. You have so many things that we didn't have 20 years ago.

So a lot of different trainers with different things that you can do. Yeah, everybody is getting stronger and stronger. And, you know, right now you have to be very fit if you want to play the top level.

Q. And you talked about more things. If you could name one of the single-most important.
FELICIANO LOPEZ: Well, there are many things. The trainers, they have more things to work on your body, no? Just to recover after long matches you have this ice bath that we have here that we didn't have in the past. We have many things now.

Yeah, it's about to be fit and to maintain this level the whole year, which is very difficult, because the season is very long sometimes. You see how many injuries we have around in the tour, and, yeah, it's like this, you know. It's about to be fit and to be competitive.


Photo and press conference from Wimbledon Website