Following the Rogers Cup fiasco, Marion met with Stephanie Myles of the Montreal Gazette, and with unbridled candour immediately shot forth from those fertile equine hips..
On the delays:
I think it bothered me. I have to think it didn’t bother her. So, if it didn’t bother her to start a match at 3 and start again at 9 and play 10 times better and go 500 miles on the court and not make a mistake, that’s perfect, no? But I’m not superhuman. So I paid a bit of a price for the efforts in all the previous matches and, once again, I thought it was terrible to change our court at 9 o’clock at night, when we started at 3, and when the next match hadn’t even started yet, and to move us and put then on the Centre Court. It’s a decision they’re going to have to explain to me, because to me, it makes no sense.
Q: Would you have preferred the match have been put off to Sunday, given that it was so delayed?
Not necessarily postponed to Sunday, but at least played on the same court. Really! We’re not playing a $50,000 ITF or an under-14 championship. So at least, when you start a match on one court, I’m sorry, you finish it on the same court.
Q: I think, in a similar situation, the Williams sisters (sic) refused to change courts. Do you remember that?
Yes, that was at the Australian Open. I think they had refused, even though they hadn’t started the match. It was Venus, I think, who refused to play against Sania (Mirza) on Vodaphone, she wanted to play on Rod Laver because she was originally scheduled on Rod Laver, and they hadn’t even started the match.
So, you have to believe that since I have fewer (ranking) points than Venus Wiliams, then I have a little less authority.
Q: You asked? Obviously, you defended your position?
I simply said that I didn’t think it was normal that we wouldn’t go out and play on the Centre Court. But, well, once I said that, if they put me on the Banque Nationale Court, what do you want me to do? Was I supposed to take the tournament referee, push him up against the wall and tell him, “No, you will put us on the Centre Court?”
Q: Or you could do like Venus and say, “No, I won’t play.”
Well, yes, but I wasn’t brought up the same way. So, if I’m told to do something, I do it. But honestly, that decision is an enormous lack of respect towards the players. It’s saying, okay, well, go, you, we don’t care, you’re going to play on the side court and we’ll put the players scheduled for 7 p.m. on the Centre Court. That’s what it means, really.
Q: But for you, who have already made a Wimbledon final, you’re 15th in the world, it’s even more of a lack of respect to say to you, okay, we’re moving you from Centre Court?
Listen, ask the referee and the tournament director. I don’t know. But it’s true that I really got the impression that we were the second-rate match and there was nothing to do. So, for them, there had to be a night session and they had to put that match on Centre Court and us, they could have put us on Court 22, on the practice court, and we’d have done it, I guess.
Q: And that frustration, you couldn’t put it aside on the court?
No, but that frustration wasn’t what prevented me doing my maximum on the court. I did my maximum. When I played that match, I did my utmost. She played better than me. She frankly played at an incredible level in the third set, therefore at a level that, at the moment, I cannot play. She played at a top-10 level, maybe a top-5 level. What did you want me to do?
I twisted my ankle on Friday. I have a bruise on my ankle. I did what I could during the match. I wasn’t handicapping myself by saying, repeating non-stop that they shouldn’t have changed our court and that I should have stayed on Centre Court. I played my match. But, afterwards, when I’m analyzing it, I don’t think it’s at all normal.
That’s it. I said what I think. It won’t change their decision, but that’s how it is.
Q: You decided long ago not to play the Olympics. At the moment you’re playing well. Do you not have a few regrets to not take advantage of it with a tournament like that?
I’m playing well for certain reasons. And if I go to the Olympics in the way the (French) Federation was proposing, I wouldn’t play at that level anyway. So, what’s the use?
You see me today, in the state I’m in, taking a plane to return to Paris. Monday night, I’d take a flight to Beijing and they tell me, Okay, that’s nice, Marion, but now for five days you will train as we do, as we have decided, and you’ll do it four hours a day, because since you haven’t trained enough, you haven’t played enough matches, so you have to do four hours a day with two practice matches per day, because since you haven’t played all season (sarcasm), you have to play practice matches.
Oh, and yeah, your father? Well, leave him to the side, and we’ll see.
Now you tell me, in a week, what kind of state am I in, and how am I going to play?
Montreal Gazette
www.marion-bartoli.net
Classic Bartoli.
These Fed Cup remarks are reassuring.
