A TALE OF NERVES- MY FIRST INTERVIEW
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 5:49PM Hello OTGT readers! This is Lindsay, @linzsports, reporting from Legg Mason. I've been here with Rachel, your fabulous Editor-In-Chief of OnTheGoTennis, since Saturday but she had to leave last night and was kind enough to pass along the reigns to me. *cue foreboding music*
The part of Rachel's "job" that I was most excited about was doing the OnTheGoTennis Quick Q&A's. She makes it look so fun and effortless! I love talking to people, and people usually LOVE talking to me (I'm a blast!) so I was just really excited for the opportunity to interview players one-on-one with such fun questions. Even after finding out my first time flying solo would be with Tommy Haas (!) I still kept it together- I am professional after all, or at least capable of pretending to be one for five minutes.
"Tommy Haas will be here in two minutes!" When the announcement rang out in the press center I grabbed my camera, checked the battery power, and was ready to go. I just needed the questions- wait, where were the questions? WHERE WERE THE QUESTIONS? In the insanity of the day Rachel had accidentally run out with the OnTheGoTennis Q&A questions in her pocket! Oh no! But still, I could do this. A panicked text, a quick e-mail from Rachel (thanks Blackberry!) and we were back in business.
I sat front row in the presser so I could film it and be ready to go with our questions right afterwards. I was signaled that I only could ask him 5 questions- a reasonable request for a player of Haas's stature- and once again, I realized I was in trouble. My phone could only show a few questions at a time, how would I skip around without holding things up or completely acting like a fool? Quick on my feet I went to the notepad application on my phone and typed in the 5 questions I wanted to ask- discreetly of course, I was in the front row and I didn't want to be rude! Deep breaths. Cool as a cucumber. I have this under control. The presser ended and the ATP Media Director pointed Haas in my direction. You've got this Lindsay.
And then he looked at me. Right in the eyes. Tommy Haas, who I had watched play tennis since I was ten, was looking me in the eyes. He was waiting for me to say something. I had to say something. It was my turn to say something to Tommy Haas. "Hi Tommy, I'm Lindsay from OnTheGoTennis" (WHY IS HE LOOKING RIGHT IN MY EYES? Oh my he is handsome. Where is my voice? Why is my entire body shaking?!)
Yup, that's right- there was nothing calm about me. I kept trying to gather myself, to "play cool" but I can't ever remember a time when I was that nervous. To make matters worse my blackberry screen kept going dark and I was terrified I'd navigate away from my questions! And did I mention he was looking right into my eyes?
But Tommy (clearly we're on a first name basis now) could not have been nicer. He gave thoughtful and in-depth answers to all of the questions and stayed in a great mood- even when talking about losing 8 Match Points (my response "you did your best!" might not have been my finest moment...). I think overall the interview came out great, mostly thanks to the fact that I was off camera. You can check it out here.
They say the first interview is the hardest and I really hope that's the case! There's a great lineup here at Legg Mason today and there are lots of OnTheGoTennis Q&A's to come...I just hope I remember the print out this time!
Reader Comments (2)
am completely looking forward to the rest of the Q & A's...