Roddick też pokonał, Roddick też !

Dla mnie ten zawodnik to jedna wielka kicha.

Odświeżamy temat Mistrza

#6) Bangkok 2009

1R BYE
2R Kim 62 62
QF Korolev 46 63 64
SF Melzer 64 76
F Troicki 75 63

Gilles Simon nie zagra w Australian Open.

France's Gilles Simon pulls out of Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia(AP) — Gilles Simon of France has withdrawn
from the Australian Open because of a right knee injury.

The 15th seed has been off the tour treating a chronic knee
injury for almost two months. He last played in November at the
Paris Masters.

The 25-year-old Frenchman said he traveled to Melbourne on
Saturday against his doctor’s advice and realized during
pre-tournament practice he wasn’t ready to play at his top
level.

Simon said he “figured it’s more likely this would end bad than
good.”

Simon’s departure leaves No. 10-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and
No. 32-seeded Jeremy Chardy as the only remaining seeded
Frenchmen playing in the Australian Open, which starts Monday.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/3269 … alian-open

Wimbledon 2010 -wywiad po walkowerze w 2 rundzie

Q. Obviously with the way the draw has worked out, could be Andy Murray in the next round. Just your thoughts on that. Obviously be strong crowd support for him.

GILLES SIMON: The strong crowd is not a problem. I know it. I played Rafa in semis in Madrid and the crowd was not for me, so it will be the same, I think.

But if I play against Andy, that would be nice for me, because it's long time I didn't play a match like this against a really top player in a slam.

So I'm gonna see how I will play on the court. I hope I will be doing something good. I'm just testing myself on the match and on this tournament, so I don't have really ‑‑ I don't have expectation about the result at the end. I will just play my match and we will see.

Q. Every year you've been to Wimbledon you've improved from the previous year. Is this year going to be the quarterfinals?

GILLES SIMON: I don't know. I hope. But I'm not in my best shape also, and Andy is a very good player.

Still, he play against Jarkko, who is playing very good also. So I'm not sure he's gonna win 100%.

But for sure my next opponent will be tough to defeat. I have no pressure. If it's Andy, I lost against him when I was playing my best tennis, so this time I don't know.

Q. How is your knee? Are you still having problems, or are you fully recovered now?

GILLES SIMON: Normally I'm fully recovered, but I can still feel the pain. For the maybe next two months, next or three months, there are still a risk for me.

But actually I have no pain. As you can see, I have no strap. I don't take any antiinflammatories. Normally I'm okay.

Q. Which is a harder prospect: Murray at Wimbledon or Nadal in Madrid?

GILLES SIMON: Quite the same, but Nadal was No. 1 and was playing amazing tennis in 2008. So I don't know. And I won this one.

So Murray, I don't know. I will tell you after the match.

Q. We see every year at Roland Garros French players don't do so well in their home tournament. It's been not as long as Fred Perry for here, but French players haven't won in Paris for a while. Do you admire the way Andy Murray handles the pressure at Wimbledon? Because he's our only player, where you've got lots of good players.

GILLES SIMON: For sure he's alone. But for us, yes, we have the pressure, but we are many players, so it's a little bit easier.

For him it's hard, because you know, I have an apartment right here. The guy told me, Murray didn't win anything for the last six months. That's a shame. Come on, he's playing good. He played a little final in Australia.

He said, No, no, no. He didn't win. He has to win. So I can feel a little bit the pressure he have.

But I just think he's doing the maximum. Last year he reached the semifinal; it was a good result, I think. He played a nice match, even if he lost this one. I think he's doing good.

Q. Do you feel under pressure? Obviously with the World Cup, will you restore some pride to French sport here?

GILLES SIMON: For us, no, I don't care what they did. It's not the same sport. It's really different. I think ‑‑ that's a shame also. Football is football. We are just playing tennis.

They have one of the best team in the world. We don't have the best players in the world, so it's different.

Q. Will you be supporting England now?

GILLES SIMON: Not sure, so just gonna watch who is win. When your team is out, after you don't care.

http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/int … 23905.html

Dziewczyna Simona porodziła mu pierworodnego, któremu nadali imię Tymoteusz.

Gratulacje, teraz zagraj mecz życia.

Simon Will Meet New Son — as Soon as He Loses

Resurgent after a year of injuries and doubt, Gilles Simon has put himself back into the third round of the United States Open, where he will face No. 1-seeded Rafael Nadal on Sunday.

“If I win, it’s fabulous,” Simon said. “And if I lose, it’s even more fabulous.”

If that sounds like a misquote, it is not. Simon became a father Thursday, but his son, Timothée, was born in France, about four weeks early. With his companion, Carine Lauret, going into labor unexpectedly, Simon had no time to stick to the plan and return to France in time to assist with the birth.

“That’s where the Concorde was a great thing,” he said, looking subdued Friday night, even though he had just beaten 29th-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber in five sets.

But the Concorde, the supersonic plane that once shuttled passengers and the occasional tennis star between Paris and New York in less than four hours, is no longer in service, and so Simon, at the urging of Lauret, decided to play on.

“It’s been rough; anybody in this situation would have felt ill at ease,” he said. “In any case, I couldn’t have been there. When I fell asleep on Wednesday, there was no sign, and the next day, I get a call to tell me: ‘My water broke. I’m at the maternity ward.’

“I couldn’t have made it in time.”

Nadal, informed of Simon’s predicament, joked that he would be happy to buy Simon a ticket back to France before their match. But Simon, however torn, appears committed to playing out his hand in New York.

It is the downside of the nomadic life of a tennis professional but also a reflection of where Simon finds himself at this sensitive stage of his career. Little more than a year ago, he was on the way up after reaching his first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the 2009 Australian Open.

In 2008, he had beaten Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. He made use of his fine tennis brain, silken footwork and counterpunching style to climb into the top 10 and even take part in the ATP Tour’s elite year-end championships, reserved for the top eight men in the game.

But the second half of Simon’s 2009 season was spoiled by an injury to his right knee, and the same problem forced him to take two more extended breaks from competition this year. But his results since Wimbledon, where he reached the third round, have been encouraging and include a victory over Andy Roddick in Washington.

Though the 25-year-old Simon is now No. 42 in the world, his game and health finally appear headed in the right direction.

“I think if not for all he’s been through, he would have left the tournament,” Remi Barbarin said. “But he’s worked so hard to come back.”

Barbarin, who coaches the French player Michael Llodra, was one of several Frenchmen here who dined with Simon on Thursday night at the French restaurant Tout-Va-Bien, which translates to All Is Well. That was hardly the way Simon was feeling that night, or when he took the court against Kohlschreiber on Friday.

“I simply told myself that if I lose the match, it would not affect me in the least,” said Simon, one of four French men remaining in the draw. “It was difficult to find the motivation. On the court, my concentration wasn’t there all the time. In the end, I enjoyed myself quite a bit because I was really loose out there. I didn’t say a word for five sets, which has never happened before. In the end, it actually allowed me to play a very good match, particularly at the end.”

An even better match (particularly at the end) will presumably be required if Simon is to prolong his quandary by beating Nadal. Simon’s lone victory over Nadal came on an indoor hardcourt in the semifinals of the Masters Series event in Madrid in 2008, when Nadal was near the end of his best and most grueling season.

In Simon’s three other matches with Nadal, he has not won a set, and it was Nadal who stopped him at the Australian Open in 2009, winning, 6-2, 7-5, 7-5, despite Simon’s continued attempts to search for better ideas.

“Tactically very interesting,” Federer said at the time.

Simon, a late bloomer who was just 5 feet tall at age 15, has long had to use his head to overcome greater force (his tennis hero as a boy was the smallish American Michael Chang). With parents who valued academic achievement over athletic prowess, Simon is one of the few top French players to have passed the baccalaureate at the end of high school.

“My parents were not high-level athletes,” Simon once explained. “They always supported my tennis, but they really didn’t want me to let my studies go and only play tennis. In France we have lots of players who fail in their studies at age 16 or 17. If you make it as a tennis player, great, but if you don’t, it’s not great at all.”

But for all his brain power, making it interesting this time against Nadal could be even more of a challenge, with Nadal fresher than usual and never more eager to win this tournament and with Simon pulled in two directions.

“I’ll try everything, and if I lose, frankly it’s normal,” he said Friday night. “I just hope they let us play early, because the planes for Paris are at night, and if it doesn’t go well, I really wouldn’t want to miss that plane.”

Conveniently, the United States Open organizers scheduled Simon and Nadal to play the last match in the day session.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/sport … ref=tennis

US Open 2010 - wywiad po porażce w 3 rundzie

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Nadal said on the court you had a baby.

GILLES SIMON: Yeah.

Q. Two days ago?

GILLES SIMON: Yeah. That's why I'm going to be short. (Laughter.)

Q. Boy or girl?

GILLES SIMON: Boy.

Q. Name?

GILLES SIMON: Timothy. Like Timothy in English.

Q. When is your flight home, and how eager are you to get home?

GILLES SIMON: As soon as possible. I don't know yet. But I had a great match to play this afternoon. I knew that if I lose, I will be home right after.

So my coach is doing the booking. (Smiling.)

Q. Were you distracted at all by these thoughts on the court?

GILLES SIMON: A little bit. It's hard to focus for me the last three days.

But I think I was playing good. The two first sets were nice. I had some problem with my return today. I missed a lot of return.

And then the third set, I have to say that I was already in the plane. (Laughter.)

Q. Did Rafa say something to you at the net? I saw he gave a thumbs up.

GILLES SIMON: He knows I'm impatient to see my baby. He knows that I'm not really sad today, even if I lost.

Q. When did you first hear from your wife that she had the baby and what was your reaction?

GILLES SIMON: Two days ago.

Q. Thursday morning?

GILLES SIMON: No. The night it was okay. When I woke up the morning, she told me, Baby is coming. So it was strange feeling. I mean, I was alone in my room. I definitely didn't want to be there, but I couldn't do anything.

I expecting him to arrive four weeks later, so it's just bad luck.

Q. First baby?

GILLES SIMON: Yeah.

Q. You were in Manhattan in your hotel?

GILLES SIMON: Yeah.

Q. Were you planning to not play anything after the Open?

GILLES SIMON: Yeah.

Q. So you thought it was all going to work great?

GILLES SIMON: I was hoping to have more time, but...

Q. This is your first baby?

GILLES SIMON: Yeah. Already asked.

Q. It seems like the French are doing really well this year. Overall I think there are six or seven players in the round of 32. I guess this means bigger, better things to come for the following year. Would you agree with that?

GILLES SIMON: Well, we did better than the last year. I don't know why we had, you know, bad results here the years before, 'cause we likes when -- we like to play when it's fast. I mean, this is the fastest hard court.

Maybe we are tired at the end of the season. I don't know. But I think there is no reason. I don't think that it's an exception this year. I think it should be like this every year.

Q. Did you ever change a diaper?

GILLES SIMON: Yeah. Was my cousins, because I'm the older one.

http://www.usopen.org/en_US/news/interv … 61878.html

Simon says Metz title is a family affair

Frenchman Gilles Simon says bringing his three-week-old baby son and girlfriend along to the Metz ATP event certainly didn't hurt in his run to victory.

The Frenchman became a father on September 2 - weeks earlier than expected - and had to rush home from the US Open after the birth.

Metz was his first return to the game. "I wasn't supposed to come here initially; my son was due to be born this week so logically I hadn't entered any tournaments," he explained. "But because I had been playing well I really wanted to try to compete and really wanted to come to Metz; I knew I could do something good."

The family outing proved to be a winning combination. "Since my son was born, I haven't spent much time with him yet. When I decided to play this week I also decided to bring the family with me to Metz." Simon, now holder of seven titles, called the decision "the unknown."

"I didn’t know how it was going to be, if he would keep me up at night, and in the end, the result is perfect. Everything went very well and I am delighted to get to share this title with my family today."

The trophy was his first in a year since Bangkok last September. In the interim, he has struggled with knee problems. "During my time off, I strengthened my upper body to try to improve my serve, to serve stronger and for longer and this week. My serve is what kept me in the matches even if I wasn’t playing so well."

http://www.tennistalk.com/en/news/20100 … ily_affair