U.S. OPEN

August 31, 1996

Jeff Tarango

JEFF TARANGO: Well, he's a player that likes the pace. I hit a really clean ball, a really good ball, so I think he really liked my pace. I was really having a hard time finding a game plan. Actually I had to change my entire game and kind of push the ball deep. That was something that was really difficult for me to do. Once I started doing it, it worked really well. I didn't have much confidence doing it, so I probably should have been able to approach a couple more times than I did. You know, changing my game so much, it kind of hurt me in order to have to beat this guy. I really had to play what I felt was bad tennis.

JEFF TARANGO: I've played him on clay, which is a lot different. I've played him indoors, which is a lot different. The last time I played him here, I was up a set and a break. I thought that I played better than he did. But I lost the match. It was just a big disappointment for me.

JEFF TARANGO: Yeah.

JEFF TARANGO: What do you mean?

JEFF TARANGO: Well, it wasn't easy. Made it a lot more difficult. I think at 4-3, he was serving in the first set, I was up 40-Love on his serve, lost that game. Took a lot of confidence out of my game. I had an approach at 40-15, had a really good forehand to his backhand. I didn't come in behind it; I kind of watched it. Then I missed a backhand. He ended up winning the first set. I think if I would have won the first set, would have been a lot different. Would have been more pressure on him in the third set when I finally did figure out how to play him.

JEFF TARANGO: Well, he doesn't like when you don't hit pace to him. He likes pace. When you don't hit pace, he can't even hit the ball on the strings. It was a little frustrating to me because I like to hit the ball hard. It was tough for me to change my whole game. Like I said, in the first set if I had broken back, I think I would have had a lot more confidence to maybe be more aggressive on some points. I wasn't, and he hit a couple winners off some approaches, and that discouraged me. I just didn't play the match as confidently as I would have liked to.

JEFF TARANGO: Well, it's interesting to me that they have a rule, play to the service pace, but they don't enforce it out there, that he's able to tell me when I can and can't serve is pretty strange. Over 20 times he must have asked me to wait in between my first and second serves or when I was just sitting there waiting for a first serve. You know, that's the way the ball bounces, I guess.

JEFF TARANGO: I don't think that umpire really could have done anything. He's not as experienced as most.

JEFF TARANGO: Yes.

JEFF TARANGO: Well, no, I wasn't confident that I was going to beat him. I thought I had a chance to beat him. I've lost to him a few times and I've beaten him once. I knew I could beat him. I knew I was going to have to play well and I was going to have to play a game that I didn't like to play. Whenever you come into a match like that, you kind of go back and forth. You kind of feel like a schizophrenic, "Should I hit this or play it soft?" It plays with your head too much. It's tough to play a match like that. I guess that's something that Michael Chang does really well, and something that Pete does really well. Maybe that's why they're No. 1 and 2, because Pete can really take the pace off the ball and he can really sting the ball; Michael can do the same. It's part of getting to the next level. I've been to the Round of 32 a hell of a lot of times in Grand Slams. If I'm going to take it to the next level, that's something I'm going to have to be a little more adaptable on. I think that's definitely the only way I can look at it.