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April 2002 Belgian Press Conference April Q. About your shoulder injury the wildest rumours were going on, also very negative ones. What’s the status in fact? Kim: Considering the circumstances, good. I have had a check and a scan last Thursday and it showed a considerable improvement. However, the inflammation hasn’t gone yet. It is a chronic injury. To get rid of it completely, I should take a long rest, but that is not possible right now as I don’t want to lose all my points. Within a month and a half, Roland Garros is coming up and I want to shine there again. Q. What does the Fed Cup mean to you? Will you play or not? Kim: If it is somehow possible, I will. I really would love to play against Australia at the end of April. I only have good memories regarding the Fed Cup. We won the Cup at the end of last year. But it has to be feasible. My shoulder may not hamper me. The coming weeks will show whether it is going to be possible or not. As of next week I will resume my tennis training and at the end of this month there is the Hamburg tourney where I would like to commence playing again. We will know more before it starts. Q. You play a tournament and then you have to take a rest again. That’s not really ideal to find a good match rhythm, isn’t it? Kim: That’s my biggest problem. I immediately got a difficult opponent at my first match in Indian Wells. When you just resume competition and aren’t really in form – I had an ear infection – you risk to crash, what happened then. Things went a lot better in Key Biscayne. I got time to get match rhythm. I played one great set against Monica Seles, but then my serve proved to be less accurate and I couldn’t use my speed to its full potential. Q. What’s going on with all these injuries with the women? In Melbourne three, four top players were missing, and also now a number are out? Kim: I think that the schedule is too tough. Next to the WTA-tournaments there is the Fed Cup, which has been spread over three weeks this year. If you want to play these, then you are almost obliged to drop some matches. I, for example, have to drop the second round of the Fed Cup because Stanford is scheduled then, the tournament that I won last year. There are that many points at stake for me that I will have to play there. Too bad for the Fed Cup, but I don’t have a choice here. Another cause is the continuous change of surfaces. First they play on hardcourts, then it’s clay, then grass, then hardcourts again. Each time your body gets under pressure in a different way. The balls get heavier, the courts faster and faster. Nice for the spectacle, but the joints of the players are really put to the test.