By Scoop Malinowski

This week Nick Kyrgios graciously answered tennis fans questions on Twitter including one particular seemingly harmless query: “What’s the toughest part of playing Fed?”

Much to the surprise of everyone, Kyrgios replied: “Mirka heckling and whistling at me between serves!!”

Federer · Kyrgios · RF

U.S. OPEN

August 30, 1995

Thomas Muster

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

Q. Thomas, can you please tell us when you left Croatia after the tournament there, and how long it took you to get to the United States and your flight?

THOMAS MUSTER: I left on Sunday night, took private plane to Paris. Slept at the airport and left in the morning 11 o’clock, Concord, arrived there at 9 o’clock; practiced at 3.

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GREG SHARKO: First quarterfinal for Mats here at the Lipton since’88 when he won it.

Q. Have you got some sort of momentum thing going now, I mean, having won so easily the last couple of rounds?

MATS WILANDER: Yeah, I have got the momentum going for me now for sure, yeah. I think the last two matches I have sort of played a little better than I thought I was able to play at this stage, but I think that momentum changed the last couple of weeks and winning a couple of close matches and even since the French Indian Wells I won 7-5 in the third, which has been unusual for me for the last year, and when you suddenly feel like you are going to win again, then everything changes; perspective changes completely.

Mats Wilander

By Scoop Malinowski

The Dutch junior star won the Wimbledon boys title in 2006 (def. Marcin Gawron). He reached a career high singles ATP ranking of 40 in 2010 when he reached two ATP Tour semifinals (Barcelona and New Haven).

DeBakker also has career wins over Tomas Berdych, John Isner (at Wimbledon 2R after the Isner vs Mahut marathon) and Jo Tsonga. He reached the third round at Roland Garros in 2010.

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Sebastian Korda had a breakthrough week this week in the $25,000 Houston Futures event.

The 17-year-old son of 1998 Australian Open champion Petr Korda, entered the Houston Futures ranked 1357 and coming off a recent win against Stanford star Tom Fawcett, ranked 900, in the first round of Stockton Challenger qualies, 7-5 in the third. (Fawcett had beaten ATP world no. 92 Ruben Bemelmans at the recent Tiburon Challenger.)

In Houston, Korda drew Japanese Kaichi Uchida, ranked 373 in the first round. Korda prevailed in a dramatic battle 7-6 (13-11), 7-6 (7-4). In the next round, Korda defeated an Argentine named Alan Kohen, ranked 1317, 64 76.

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MONTE CARLO OPEN

April 23, 1996

Andre Agassi

MONTE CARLO, MONACO

Q. Andre, I guess it’s not easy to play a match in these conditions when you are expecting something else?

ANDRE AGASSI: Yes, that’s right.

Q. So how did you handle the match?

ANDRE AGASSI: Well, you know, there’s not much you can really do except try to, you know, stay relaxed and yet not so relaxed that you forget about what you’re doing. I think the most difficult is the first few games right when you come out, make sure your feet get moving quick or else you cannot find your rhythm sometimes for an entire set.

Andre Agassi

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U.S. OPEN

September 3, 1992

Pam Shriver Press Conference after losing to Steffi Graf

Q. During the break, did you think of the possibilities you had in the first set?

PAM SHRIVER: I didn’t dwell on it during the break, no. I just — I am very aware that I had the one breakpoint 3-4 — excuse me — 4-All or 3-All?

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By Scoop Malinowski

I’m gonna catch some flak for this but I think Hewitt, at his best, his feistiest, most fired up and tenacious, could put a beating on anyone from tennis history…Federer, Nadal and Djokovic included.

Heck, we saw what Hewitt did to Pete Sampras in that U.S. Open final of 2001. Hewitt slammed Poor Pete to the tune of 76 61 61. And it wasn’t like Pete was tired from a long semi – he bested Safin, the defending champ, in straight sets. In his semi, Hewitt blasted Kafelnikov 1-2-1.

Australia · Lleyton Hewitt

By Scoop Malinowski

One of the popular player lines you hear repeated a lot today is that they want to improve something in their game each day.

But thinking about it, how can a player practice and work on aspects of his or her game and actually concretely know if they actually did improve or regress or stay exactly the same?

Nadal · Shanghai Rolex Masters