I’ve never in my life thought in terms of a collective way of thinking. I’ve never put myself inside a collective of a generation, of a country, of a region, whatever, so it’s very difficult for me to answer this. I think that these guys who are on the top, they’ve reached it, and they’re doing a lot of things right. They’re doing a lot of things right, and they have the ability to do them right. They have the money to back it up, because everything has costs: physio costs, massage guy costs, coach costs. And now an assistant coach? It’s a big thing to have two or three tennis coaches, which I don’t really understand, maybe because I am not experienced enough. You can back it up, and you just build everything up, up, up.

So the rich get richer.

Yeah, and then when you’re ranked 40, 30, 20, you still need to think about your bills. You’re not earning a crazy amount of money. You can make a decent living, but you have to really think about which coach you’re going to take, who is going to travel with me, et cetera, et cetera. All these things, they help the top players a lot because they’re in bad shape, they get out of these dumps very fast. One, two tournaments and they’re back, because they did the work. If you’re traveling alone like I did, for a period of time: I’m in a dump, O.K., and how do I get out of it? Trust me, it’s not the easiest thing, to go and practice when you have pain from an injury. To go and practice in that moment is difficult.

It’s been a year of a lot of negative news in sports, with all the attention on Russian sport and wider doping issues, as well as in tennis more specifically with the attention on match fixing. What do you make of this negativity around the sports?

I think that everything, what every individual does, it will come around. It’s not only about sports, it’s about in general. I truly believe that if you make your money the wrong way, you’re going to lose it, or something else bad. It’s a little bit out of Buddhist philosophy about karmic things, but I really believe it. I can only speak, again, not collectively but individually. I want to be without these thoughts. I want my karma to be bright, to be free of all these things. And if somebody wants to make a decision that they want to sell something or they want to cheat, what can you do?