ATP Tour

My Masters 1000: Bob Bryan & Mike Bryan

Which is your favourite Masters 1000 event and why?
Bob Bryan: Indian Wells. It was the one that took us the longest to win [their 14th appearance, in 2013]. It felt the sweetest. We had our family down on the court. Just a good memory from that one.

Which is your favourite Masters 1000 city and why?
Mike Bryan: I would say it's tough to beat Monte-Carlo. It's like a resort. You're looking out at the water every time you wake up. You can basically hit a ball into the ocean. So beautiful. We know the prince [Albert II]. He's invited us to his castle up on the hill. It's tough to beat that scenery.

If you could win only one more Masters 1000 event, which would it be and why?
Bob: Wow. Well, Paris was a sticky one for us. We lost first round there, I think six or seven years in a row, and then we packed our bags and brought our bags to the court, booked our plane ticket on our first round. And we kept doing it and then we finally won the tournament. It was a superstitious thing. That would be a sweet one to win because that one was so sticky early in our career...

Because we lost first round every year, we were like, alright, we're going to do it again. So we packed our bags, booked our plane ticket, brought it to the courts, were ready to go home. And then we won the match, did the same thing the next day, went on to win the tournament [in 2005]... Low expectations.

Which Masters 1000 court is your favourite and why?
Mike: I would our favourite Masters 1000 court is [Stadium 2], the Grandstand at Indian Wells. It has the Nobu. You look up and you see people in the restaurant windows. After matches, we're trying to usually hit balls up into the restaurant. That thing's pretty nice. It's always packed. We play a lot of night matches over there... The atmosphere. It's in the U.S. We have a lot of our family and friends come down there for that, and it's just a new court. Larry Ellison put up a lot of money to build that special place.

When and where did you make your Masters 1000 debut?
Bob: I would say we probably made that in Cincinnati. We were juniors. Got a wild card there. That was I think the first time we got our feet wet in a Masters 1000. Our first Masters 1000 win was in Toronto, 2002. We played hometown favourite Daniel Nestor in the final. Yeah, that was a big one for us... [During our debut] we weren't as good as everyone. We were just juniors. Went to college. Got a little stronger. Came out still took us a few years to get it going. We were just little kids and we got smoked.

What do you consider to be your best Masters 1000 win?
Mike: I would say our first big win at a Masters was against Rafter/Bjorkman, and that put us on the map. They were the No. 1 team in the world at the time, and they actually awarded bonus points for big wins. So we got 50 bonus points. That put us in the Top 100 [of the Emirates ATP Rankings] and we've been there ever since.

Bob: That was Indian Wells at the old Grand Champions [Hotel], Clubhouse Court.

Mike: Yeah, that was a sweet court.

Your favourite Masters 1000 memory?
Mike: There's been 35 of them.

Bob: We've had a lot of fun times at the Masters 1000s. I would say maybe Shanghai. That was our most recent one. It completed the Golden Masters so we won all nine of them. So that was a cool one just to have the whole set.

Favourite off-court memory at a Masters 1000?
Bob: We've done a lot of sweet [ATP] Stars activities. The one most recent memory, we went to Cirque du Soleil. We went backstage, all the gymnasts flying around. We tried to climb one of those poles. It's a lot harder than it looks. But yeah, we're lucky we get to a lot of cool stuff. Drive in fast cars.