I'm not sure how many words were churned out by players during the first week of this Australian Open and then run through the meat grinder of the "official" news conference transcript, the computer and, finally, the front pages of our real or virtual newspapers. But I do know that even after you weed out of-the-moment material, you still have a load of interesting stuff. Herewith, some of the best quotes from Week 1 of the Australian Open.
"Ask Caroline tonight when she comes in here. She's asking me, 'How are the courts?' I don't know. 'How are the balls?' I don't know. She has to ask Aggie [Radwanska]. She's like, 'I can't ask you.' ... I grew up in Compton. This is amazing situations for me. The ball is great, you know. Wow. We used to hit with dead balls. What am I going to complain about?"
-- Top-seeded Serena Williams, when she was asked her opinion on the pressure of the balls being used at the Australian Open.
"Well, I think he played well, but is true that what he did at the end of the fifth is just amazing. 'Congratulate.' I say on the court, but I want to say here [in the news conference], too. Very few players can do that after four hours something of match, 5-all, love-30. So just will say thanks to him because he's a great example what he did today."
-- No. 3 seed Rafael Nadal praising Tim Smyczek's intervention to play a let after an unruly fan, shouting out, disrupted the Spanish star's service action and caused him to hit a fault.
"I've seen it all in two matches."
-- Lindsay Davenport, the new coach of Madison Keys (who upset No. 4 seed Petra Kvitova to reach the fourth round Saturday), commenting on Keys' tendency to blow hot and cold after watching Keys defeat Dominika Cibulkova but then fall to Varvara Lepchenko in the very next round in Brisbane.
"I thought the crowd was massive today. They got behind me a lot at some really key moments. They got a bit carried away with some things. ... At stages they were telling me where he was going to serve. They obviously think it's pretty easy out there."
-- Nick Kyrgios, who clearly had a lot more trouble figuring out where Ivo Karlovic was planning to serve, following the Aussie's second-round win over the Croatian ace-maker. Karlovic had bombed No. 1 Novak Djokovic off the court at the Qatar tournament a few weeks earlier.
" I don't know. Sometimes I just feel like I have better things to do."
-- No. 2 seed Maria Sharapova, on why she doesn't enjoy watching her own performances on YouTube unless impelled to do so by her coaches.
"I felt for some reason yesterday and this morning that it was not going to be very simple today. Even in practice, I still felt the same way. I was just hoping it was one of those feelings you sometimes have and it's totally not true and you just come out and play a routine match."
-- No. 2 seed Roger Federer's premonitions proved all too valid when he went out and played his third-round match with Italy's Andreas Seppi. Ranked just No. 46, Seppi was on the wrong end of an 0-10 record with Federer, but he halted Federer's streak of 11 consecutive Australian Open semifinals.
"I don't know, an old guy asking you to twirl. ... It was funny."
-- Eugenie Bouchard, after she was asked to "pirouette" to show off her fluorescent Nike outfit by an Australian on-court interviewer on the floor of Rod Laver Arena. But "funny" quickly morphed into deadly serious as noses got out of joint and the media jumped all over the sexist overtones of the incident. The next thing you know, we had "Twirlgate" -- the antipodal answer to "Deflategate."
"It's the best serving I've ever seen from a guy who's hit just two aces."
-- ESPN commentator John McEnroe describing the performance of Andreas Seppi during his third-round upset of No. 2-seeded Roger Federer. Seppi went on to hit two more aces to finish the match with four.