Q. After all the development, the planning, the trips to Spain, it’s finally going to come out, if I understand correctly, but there’s a little bit of a problem. There’s a guy named Roger Federer who has Lindor truffles. As a marketing person now, how would you tell America to try Sugarpova and not Roger’s?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: Well that’s chocolate. Mine are gummies and gumballs. It’s like, What’s your preference? That’s made in Switzerland; this is made in Spain. No, a lot of differences.
I mean, those are quite different. I’m just happy that it’s finally over with. I worked on it for a long time. There’s not much to be done from my end in a way except promote it and letting the world know about it.
Q. Ultimately can a gumball stand up to a truffle?
MARIA SHARAPOVA: It depends what your preference is. I mean, mid‑afternoon I’m not a big truffle person; I’m more of a gum girl. But it depends what everybody likes.
Q. Are you working with Mark Knowles here? You guys in a lot of ways are peers.
MARDY FISH: He’s like 20 years older than me (laughter). Just kidding.
No, he’s helped me a ton. Maybe none more evident than tonight when I lost my serve in both of those sets to serve it out and still was able to mentally focus back and realize that, you know, I haven’t just lost the set, he’s just gotten even in the set so there’s still opportunities to win the set.
In times past maybe I would have struggled with that scenario, especially twice in a row. And that’s hard. Any time you lose one of those two sets, you’re in a dogfight. I knew that if I did win that second set, that was going to be a big, big factor in the match.
I mean, that’s a long way back for him after two hours of pretty physical tennis. It’s pretty humid out there. Not necessarily the heat, but the humidity. You could feel it. It’s pretty humid. That was pretty physical.
So that was a long way back for him, so obviously felt good to win that.
Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, how good was your serve today, knowing what you can do on a good day?
JACK SOCK: I think my second serve was a 9.63. I think my first serve was pretty good. I mean, when I missed the first serve, I think my second serve really helped me. I was able to start off the point ahead even with the second serve.
When I think I was down a game, my serve was a 10 coming up big on some points where I was down or some games where I was down.
Q. A lot of Europeans want to win Roland Garros or Wimbledon; for many Americans it’s winning the US Open or becoming No. 1. If I recall correctly, you said your goal for your career is to make friends. Could you to talk about that.
KIM CLIJSTERS: I don’t think I said it that way. Obviously my goal in my career was obviously to be the best tennis player that I can be, but at the same time not be, you know, antisocial and not spend 15 years on tour, and when you step away from the sport not having any friends at the end of the day.
I think, you know, it’s not like I started on tour when I was 25 and I built up kind of a normal friendship base when I was home. My friends were girls from tour. You know, I have a few friends at home, but I think a lot of the girls I was close with, a lot of the girls, we went through puberty together, boyfriends on tour, and I think it’s something that we shared and talked about.
I don’t like to be on tour and not talking to players or not knowing kind of what’s behind the tennis player. It’s not like it was the most important thing because I was here to play tennis, and still am. But at the same time, there’s a place for work and focus and at the other times there is the social part.
Karen Pestaina is covering the US Open as media for Tennis Panorama News. Follow her updates on twitter at @TennisNewsTPN.