PODCAST - Alcaraz, Bublik, Federer, Korda, Krajicek And Many More

CARLOS ALCARAZ ON RETURNING TO WORLD NUMBER ONE BY WINNING QUEENS - ‘Right now I’m feeling better then at the beginning of the week and of course recovering the number one spot give you extra motivation going into Wimbledon. It gives you extra confidence, but it doesn’t change too much if I play Wimbledon as number two or number one’.

ALEXANDER BULIK ON WINNING THE TITLE IN HALLE - ‘Well it means the world to me. I’ve been struggling for health and now having this for a reward, I don’t take it for granted. I thought it would be nice to win this tournament one day and I’m really, really happy’.

ROGER FEDERER ON TENNIS TODAY - ‘I’m very surprised by how often and frequently I check scores, three times a day maybe, I’m really into it. I think there’s some great matches going on and I think the level of play is going up more and more, again and again and it’s nice to see the new generation challenging the likes of Novak and Rafa’.

SEB KORDA ON RECOVERING FROM HIS WRIST INJURY - ‘Hoping that my wrist gets used to playing again and hopefully I don’t have so many aches and pains. I was a little worried coming into the grass season because the ball slides a little more on the grass and you can catch it later, but everything is going well so far’.

ALFIE HEWETT ON HIS POSITIVE MINDSET - ‘Obviously I’ve got this condition and was told I have to be in a wheelchair, so obviously as a seven-year-old that was very difficult to process but it’s made me learn a lot about myself, strength can come in many different ways and It’s all about perception in many ways. You can perceive a situation to be a lot worse than it is and I’ve learnt with the tennis to be more optimistic about what’s around the corner’.

COACH MIKE RUSSELL ON HOW GRASS-COURT TENNIS HAS CHANGED FROM WHEN HE WAS PLAYING - ‘Grass is exponentially slower. My first Wimbledon you couldn’t even have a rally from the baseline, it was literally who could get to the net faster, all serving and returning, so now there’s a lot more movement, you really have to have good leg strength and good mobility, flexibility, because you’re put in awkward positions because of some of the bounces and that’s really been the biggest change I’ve seen on the grass’.

PHYSIO WOLFGANG OSWALD ON GRASS-COURT FITNESS - ‘We can’t get as much volume gym-wise because you’re coming straight from clay. It’s tough to do the grass court stuff at the end of the clay, so you have to micro-dose some stuff it, some pre-hab in the warm-up, some strengthening stuff, you can just go, like in other sports, a few week’s of lead-up, we don’t have that luxury’.

RICHARD KRAJICEK ON PETE SAMPRAS - ‘We played ten times and I beat him six times. I liked playing against him and because of my serve I wasn’t afraid of anybody and his coach said to my coach that he didn’t like playing me because he didn’t get the locker room win’.

PLUS…GRASS-COURT TENNIS FEATURE BY ATP MEDIA AND ANDREY RUBLEV FEATURE BY ATP UNCOVERED