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AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 27, 2018

Diede DeGroot

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

D. DeGROOT/Y. Kamiji

7-6, 6-4

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Congratulations. First Australian Open title.
DIEDE DeGROOT: Thank you.

Q. Talk about it.
DIEDE DeGROOT: Talk about it? Yeah, it's just amazing to be here for the second time and to perform this well.

I struggled a bit for the last two weeks, so I really had to refocus and, yeah, get my own game back. I think today I managed to do that.

Q. Do you have a reason why you think you were struggling coming in, or...
DIEDE DeGROOT: I don't know if I can say this here, but I love the country itself. Just traveling to it, I just had Christmas, I just had the holidays, and then to go out here and, yeah, to sort of having to miss that and you're so far away from home, and there's a time difference, there's heat, I think it was 48 degrees in Sydney when we got there, so there's quite a big change, yeah, coming from 5 degrees.

So, yeah, I really had to adjust some things. Then it's really nice to just, yeah, come out like this.

Q. You mentioned to me earlier in the week that you were struggling with your game, but you've certainly found your form again, haven't you, in this Grand Slam?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Yeah.

Q. Are you happy?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Yeah, that's the reason why this Grand Slam, winning it means so much. Yeah, I really had to fight through some things. I cried on court. I laughed on court. But I had to sort of just, yeah, get through it all and then, yeah, to just have a result like this, it just means so much.

Q. Does it have more meaning, because you, you know, took down the defending champion at all?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Yeah, yeah. No, Yui, for sure, she's a great player, and she's No. 1 in the world right now. That's not just for nothing. She's playing really well.

Yeah, I think it just -- it means a lot to just defeat the world No. 1 and win a Grand Slam title with it.

Q. Do you feel Wimbledon gave you a lot of belief, self-belief?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, last year I was able to play the Grand Slams for the first time. Being here for the first time I was really nervous, and, yeah, I had Serena walking into the locker room and then her sister afterwards. There were so many things coming at me. I really had to sort of find my way into the Grand Slams.

Yeah, to win Wimbledon, that's just -- it was amazing, and, yeah, it was something that I just hadn't expected yet last year. So that just really gave me the confidence that I could actually do it, and that's really good.

Q. A little bit about your story maybe, like how you started playing tennis.
DIEDE DeGROOT: I was born with a shorter right leg, and at 7 I started wheelchair tennis because I had to do some rehabilitation after surgeries.

So I picked up tennis, and I never stopped playing.

Q. Talk to me about, you know, this win today and your whole Australian series. I know some of it, Sydney, Melbourne, didn't go the way you wanted. You had to pick yourself up, didn't you, a lot, coming into here?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Yeah, yeah, no, I really had some time where I just really wasn't happy to be here. That's really tough, because you know you have to continue -- you know, you have to be here for the whole of January.

Yeah, you just -- you don't really -- you can't really expect yourself to be like that for, like, three-and-a-half weeks. So I had to change some things, and I'm really happy I was able to do that.

Q. Margaret Court, you guys don't very often on tour get the opportunity to play on a court like that. What did it mean to you to be out there on a show court at a Grand Slam?
DIEDE DeGROOT: I think being here at the Australian Open, it really feels like, yeah, the Australian Open has, like, accepted us and brought us into their tournament. I think a lot of Grand Slams can learn from that.

I had the chance to play on a show court at the US Open and also at Wimbledon, but it wasn't nearly as accepted as this. There were loads of people watching. I don't think I have ever had this many visitors. It just means a lot that the Australian Open is giving us a chance to actually perform and to play our games at this level.

Q. I know you have only been here a couple of years, but is it a slam you always enjoy coming to?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Oh, yeah. The slam, like, they have accepted us, and the facilities for the players are amazing. Yeah, you really feel like you can perform as well as you need to, because everything is here, and you can, yeah, do everything you need to do to be, yeah, to be the best player.

Q. Just talk to me about the match. That first set, lead always swapping. Then you had the breaker and then you seemed to gather momentum, didn't you?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Yeah. I was struggling with my serve a bit in the first few games, but then I managed to hold at some point to come up, I think, 4-3 it was, or 5-4 even.

But then it switched again, and I had to go again and, yeah, my only thought was just to go for every point and just to keep pushing through every ball.

I think that helped me to eventually win the tiebreaker, which was just such an intense tiebreaker. Yeah, it was good to sort of gain confidence from that.

Q. You and Yui's rivalry, your #Kamoot, can you ever count on yourself being done with Yui even if you're three, four games ahead?
DIEDE DeGROOT: No, no. I think today showed that, as well. I was 3-Love up and she came back to 3-2. I was 5-2 up and she came back to 5-4. You can never relax for a bit. You need to go for every ball.

She really shows that her mentality is, I think, the strongest in the world right now. That's why she's the No. 1 player, I think. I'm trying really hard to beat that at the moment, and I feel like I'm getting stronger every match but it's really tough.

Q. Predictions: How many more Kamoot finals do you think we will see this year?
DIEDE DeGROOT: Hopefully all of the finals. That would be amazing. No, I think the matches against Yui are always exciting and you really need to play your best game to win, and that's really motivating and it gets you to a point where you just know you have to do well, where if you play against a lower-ranked player, not top 10, but outside top 10 maybe, you feel like you can sort of relax for a bit, but then sometimes the errors come in and you don't play so well, but against Yui, you really need to play your best game. It's really important to do that.

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