HE SAID/SHE SAID: Wimbledon Day 3

 Q. You said you watched Scream last night to relax. Do you normally watch horror films to relax?

ANDY MURRAY: I wasn't watching it to relax. You normally pick the one thing that will stop you thinking about tennis. Scream did a pretty good job of that.

Q. Have you picked a film to relax to before your next match?

ANDY MURRAY: No, not yet. I'll see whatever is on Sky Movies. I mean, the movies on Sky aren't great, I don't think. There's about 20 movie channels, and you're normally struggling to find a good one. Wait and see tomorrow what they've got.


Actually, I did hear yesterday at the end of Scream they have Scream II on tonight and Scream III on on Thursday. Maybe I'll watch one of them.

Q. The Wimbledon homepage did an online survey yesterday who was the best looking male player who played Wimbledon in history. Who would have gotten your vote?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Usually I've never liked any of my colleagues. I try to keep it professional, hence no tennis relationships. So it's probably for the best for me to stay out of this. I usually like winners, though (smiling). So anyone winning is pretty cute to me.

Q. The difference with Roger, though, was that you were deemed to be in the ascendancy. If you look on the Wimbledon website today, the most popular story is you being toppled as No. 1 if you don't win this tournament and that you may be a man in decline. Do you feel like a man in decline?

RAFAEL NADAL: Me?

Q. Yes.

RAFAEL NADAL: Maybe. But I won Roland Garros two weeks ago. I don't forget (smiling). Maybe you or the website yes. After winning Roland Garros, two weeks later is a little bit fast to say I am. You can say that maybe next year, but probably now is a little bit dangerous to say that. But, no, you know, is my seventh year without be out of the top two. Is a lot of years. Probably I started to be decline, but hopefully not. Maybe they are right. I don't know.

Q. What effect did that title and victory in Birmingham have on you for your confidence? What did you take from that?

SABINE LISICKI: Well, a lot of confidence, of course. You know, after two years not playing on grass I didn't know how I'm going to play on it, so I just wanted to go in and play as many matches as possible.

It went pretty well. Yeah, a lot of confidence and just the feel for the grass as well. It's different to anything else.

Q. Could you take a moment and talk about the job you think the American media does covering tennis.

ANDY RODDICK: Well, I think I'm going to have to separate this into first of all, there's no way I can answer this and have it be a win for me, but I'm going to do it anyways.

I'm going to separate. Tennis journalists like yourselves who cover week to week to week to week to week I think do a great job, and I respect the job that you guys do. Someone who, you know, covers something and it's the first tennis match they've ever been to and all of a sudden they become an expert bothers me a little bit. I feel like we get that sometimes. That's probably the only time where I get a little perturbed, when someone isn't, one, researched, and when I feel like they have their article written before a match takes place.

Q. Is that mostly in terms of is tennis dying, a country club sport?

ANDY RODDICK: Listen. Here is what we're going to do. If you want to talk about an, Is tennis dying article, let's go by participation numbers, retail numbers, prize money, up, up, up, up, up. I hear this, Tennis is dying. Maybe it's water cooler talk. But I'll put more stock in the business of tennis in our country growing as opposed to having fun conversations around a water cooler.

Q. Why do you think it is that people refuse to accept the stats? The Wall Street Journal printed some stats which said that tennis over the past nine years is the only sport to increase participation in America.

ANDY RODDICK: This kind of gets to my first point. You can just say something and people read it as fact, but it's not researched. If you look at racquet sales, USTA memberships, across the board, it's been up. Do we have four guys in the top five in the world? No, we don't. That's about the only difference. That doesn't mean that tennis is dying. It's an international sport. I feel like a lot of times people refuse to accept that back home, which is unfortunate. It's as international a sport as there is as far as popularity. I feel like it doesn't get its maybe fair shake.

[Photo(s) credit: Getty Images]