THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.
Q. Do you think you will ever lose again?
ERNESTS GULBIS: No. (Smiling.)
Q. How does it feel to be winning?
ERNESTS GULBIS: Feels good at last. Feels really good. Last year was terrible for me. Now this year, this year I'm paying back for the last year.
Q. What's different this year than last year, your head or your body?
ERNESTS GULBIS: Yeah, I think both. Of course I got smarter a little bit. Well, first of all, I skipped Australia, did a longer preparation, practiced really well, you know, and then, yeah, nothing really interesting to say about it.
Hard work pays off eventually. That's it.
Q. The last couple of matches have been quick, which is probably good. How is your body been holding up?
ERNESTS GULBIS: Very good. I'm surprised, actually. I'm surprised how good it feels.
Honestly, my body doesn't even ask for a day off, because I would feel good even playing, keep on, keep on playing if nothing is really in pain.
It's good.
Q. You said hard work pays off, and you're a smart guy
ERNESTS GULBIS: Thank you.
Q. why did it take you so long to figure that out?
ERNESTS GULBIS: Somebody doesn't figure it out all his life. I figured it out after 24 years. I think it's quick enough.
Q. When you were trying to figure it out, would your parents get angry at you for thinking maybe...
ERNESTS GULBIS: Angry? No. Why? No, no, no. Angry? No. My mother, actually this year after Bergamo tournament when I lost in challenger first round, she told me that I should quit tennis. I told her, Give me one more month (Laughter.)
So now at least she's happy.
Q. Did you come up with the slogan on your T shirt?
ERNESTS GULBIS: No, I just wear what they give me.
Q. On a sort of boring technical point, has your forehand changed? This hand goes up and that one comes across.
ERNESTS GULBIS: It did. It did. Yeah, I started to work with Günter Bresnik in Austria since Paris last year, and already since then I started to play better. I had some good wins. I played not bad in Paris already.
I played really good in Wimbledon, and then I played also really well in US Open. I just, you know, if I would win in every one of those tournaments the second round I could advance really far in the tournament.
Wimbledon, my part of the draw, who was in quarterfinal, Florian Mayer or Kohlschreiber? These are the guys I think if I play well I have to beat them if I play well, you know, and I beat Berdych. So I could already be in top 30, top 20 by now, you know.
Only the difference was these couple of matches. But technique wise, yeah, I change the forehand a little bit. I don't really think about how I'm playing. I just want to do it more natural, you know.
Q. Seem to be improving your balance on the court as well, and your ball striking. Essentially it's just getting it to play the way you have always played, which was a natural way of way of playing?
ERNESTS GULBIS: I want to play like I played when I was 15, 16, 17 years old when I just came on tour. I played relaxed, aggressive tennis. I didn't think much. I just went for it. I didn't think how short or how big is going to be my swing.
Just ball came, I hit it. Then suddenly I started to think, you know, ball comes, what to do, and then how many steps and this and that. Then your just brain goes out of order.
Q. Isn't that difficult, though, because you know a lot less when you're 15 than when you're 24?
ERNESTS GULBIS: I didn't understand that.
Q. Isn't it difficult to just play freely without thinking, because when you're 15 you don't know so much and when you're 24 you actually do know more things?
ERNESTS GULBIS: That's the point. You know, I don't consider that when I got let's say to fourth round in US Open, I don't consider that I was a good tennis player. You know, it was just I was young coming up, you know. Just on that, like, hurray, you know, you can do anything, you know.
It's like also a lot of young guys nowadays, they play well because nobody really knows them. Nobody knows how they play. Nobody knows how to play against them.
Then they just don't care, you know. One match, second match, quarterfinal, semifinal. They don't really play consistent enough to reach that.
Still, it's going to take them maybe two, three more years to be consistent. That's what maybe took me at that moment. But I already screw up when I was 21, 22. I had my chance to be consistent when I had a good clay court season. Thinking why to continue and screw up, so...
Yeah. So story of my life, you know. I reach something, and then I destroy it.
So now I'm going to reach something and I'm going to keep reaching something new, I hope.
Q. Does it feel at all surreal for you to go in the space of like one month, losing first round of Bergamo challenger, today dropping only two games against the top 10 player?
ERNESTS GULBIS: It doesn't. I was here before. It's not my first time, you know. I had some good results. I'm just happy I'm back. That's it.
Q. You won in LA a couple years ago. Do you like playing in California? Is there something about California that suits you?
ERNESTS GULBIS: When I was a junior I really didn't like to play in America. I didn't like to go so far, and I don't know why I didn't like it.
Now I start to like it because America is really a sports nation. They respect the sport. You know, they come, they support, and that's a little bit missing in Europe tournaments, you know.
American tournaments are much more full, full of people, you know, and the atmosphere is different.
Yeah, you can say that I like it.
Q. What was the greatest difference between playing in the real tour match and playing a challenger?
ERNESTS GULBIS: When was the last time you were in challenger?
Go to it. Really.
Q. I have seen a few.
ERNESTS GULBIS: Honestly, it's a mess. The challenger tour is a mess.
Yeah, honestly. You know, you think it's funny, but it's sad, really. The way they treat people who are outside of the top 100 is just sad. Players don't make money. They travel a lot, you know, and basically players out of the top 100, they cannot afford a coach.
You know, if you're coming from a country like Latvia or Ukraine or even Russia where you don't have the big federations behind you, players struggle, you know. They have to travel to challengers because there is not so many in their own country.
So you go there, you have, I don't know, three lines umpires, two ball kids. Equally, you don't have nothing, you know.
Sometimes the challengers are in small cities in the middle of nowhere, you know. They just treat players bad. A little bit disrespectful.
That's what I don't like about that tour, you know. ATP tournament is the same. You play in qualifying, also. You get sometimes not so good respect as I think players should get.
Q. Ten or twelve years ago there wasn't even a feeder system into the major tournaments, and players had very little hope to break in. Do you feel that the challenger system at least now gives a structured way to break into the top?
ERNESTS GULBIS: Ten or twelve years ago I was ten or twelve years old. So I have no idea how it was.
I'm just saying about how I feel, you know, because I have been through everything. I played all the futures, all the qualifying, all the challengers, all the qualifying there, and I never got a lot of wildcards like the big countries do, you know, the players from the big countries.
The system itself, it's good, you know. You have to play. You have to win a lot to break in the top 100. That's tough, but that's okay. Not a problem with that.
It's just the organization and everything, it's not always the best.
Q. Do you feel that when you said you have been here before that this is a second chance?
ERNESTS GULBIS: It's been really like a third chance now, fourth. (Laughter.)
I don't know. I hope it's my last one. I hope that this is the one where I make it.
Q. You and Del Potro and Cilic were all born within 30 days of each other. Do you think about them? Do you compare yourself to them?
ERNESTS GULBIS: I don't think about them at all.
Q. No?
ERNESTS GULBIS: (Shakes head.) Nothing. (Laughter.)
Q.Do you know them?
ERNESTS GULBIS: I saw them couple of times. (Laughter.)
