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AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 24, 2018

Tennys Sandgren

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

H. CHUNG/T. Sandgren

6-4, 7-6, 6-3

TENNYS SANDGREN: You seek to put people in these little boxes so that you can order the world in your already assumed preconceived ideas. You strip away any individuality for the sake of demonizing by way of the collective.

With a handful of follows and some likes on Twitter, my fate has been sealed in your minds. To write an edgy story, to create sensationalist coverage, there are a few lengths you wouldn't go to to mark me as the man you desperately want me to be.

You would rather perpetuate propaganda machines instead of researching information from a host of angles and perspectives while being willing to learn, change, and grow. You dehumanize with pen and paper and turn neighbor against neighbor. In so doing, you may actually find you're hastening the hell you wish to avoid, the hell we all wish to avoid.

It is my firm belief that the highest value must be placed on the virtue of each individual, regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. It's my job to continue on this journey with the goal of becoming the best me I can and to embody the love Christ has for me, for I answer to Him and Him alone.

I'll take questions about the match, if you guys don't mind. Thank you. If you have any questions about the match.

Q. What kind of experience do you think you had today?
TENNYS SANDGREN: Amazing. It was amazing. He's a fantastic player. This is the second time I played him now in two weeks. It's fun. It's such a fun challenge because he does so many cool things with how he moves and how he returns and how he plays with his forehand.

So it was kind of like an extremely difficult puzzle to try to figure out. I wasn't able to figure it out, but I enjoyed trying.

Q. Do you think your play was impacted by everything going on off the court, all the attention?
TENNYS SANDGREN: I don't think so. I don't think so. I thought I played a pretty good match. I thought I played a pretty good match. I did a lot of really cool things today, I thought. He kind of forces you, I mean me, to kind of play on this edge where you're kind of doing some really cool things, and then you can fall off it and make some mistakes because he's forcing you to play so well.

So I was happy with how a lot of the match went, and then I just wasn't able to hold on in some of the deeper moments in the sets. I was happy with how I performed today.

Q. Your first serve seemed to be a lot more down than the rest of the tournament. Do you know...
TENNYS SANDGREN: Yes, maybe a little tired. The net felt like it was about 12 feet high today. Just struggling to serve the way that I wanted to. But I also knew that I had to serve well and serve to my spots correctly because he returns so well. I think that played a factor in it, as well.

Q. You were 5-3 up in the second. How critical was that moment?
TENNYS SANDGREN: Huge. Huge. That second set was everything for me, I guess, at that point. Threw in a double-fault, which wasn't good. I guess I rushed the second serve a little bit. He made pretty much every return. He puts a lot of pressure on you. I wasn't able to execute. Maybe would like to have that one back and slow it down, see if I can maybe just not lose serve there.

Q. What were you thinking when the evacuation alarm went off at the start of the match?
TENNYS SANDGREN: I wasn't sure what was going on. I wasn't sure what was going on. I'm glad that it was just a false alarm and there was nothing serious and we could get right back into the tennis. But it was interesting.

Q. Didn't affect your preparation or anything?
TENNYS SANDGREN: No, no, no.

Q. Out there in the match today, you had a racquet, and Chung had a racquet. That was fair. Do you think it's okay to come into and speak to us on how we dehumanize and...
TENNYS SANDGREN: I'll take anything about the tennis. About the tennis.

Q. Out there on the court you both had racquets. Why is it okay that you can make your comments and we can't respond?
TENNYS SANDGREN: This stopped being about tennis. I was fine talking about tennis. I'm fine talking about a lot of things. But, you know, I feel like this has gone very far away from the tennis.

I made my statement about the other things. That's what I'd like to say about it. I'd like to continue talking about the tennis. If you guys are done, I can leave. That's fine.

Q. After this, you are going home, have a different profile. Do you have an agent? You may well get opportunities you didn't have prior to this event. How is your schedule changing?
TENNYS SANDGREN: I was planning on playing a couple of challengers that started this week and next week that I'm not going to be playing in. I'm scheduled to play in Quito, make a South American trip. There's four events down there. I'm not 100% sure on that one. I'm planning on do that, then Indian Wells, Miami. We'll go from there.

You know, it's all pretty new. Where I'll be ranked is interesting. I'm excited about that. Hopefully I can keep playing well.

Q. In terms of off-court stuff, the increase in profile comes with some serious down sides but also some potentially great up sides. How will you address that part of your tennis life?
TENNYS SANDGREN: I have no idea. I have no idea. I'm going to go home and enjoy time with my family, turn off my phone, you know, just really reflect on the last two weeks, reflect where my life has gone to, where I'm at, where I am in this stage at 26, who I am as a person, who I want to continue trying to be, where I want to go in the sport, where I want to go as a man.

I constantly try to be introspective as to what's going on in my life. This has been a lot of information to digest in the last few weeks. So I need to take ample time to do so so I can move forward correctly.

Q. Are there things you learned about yourself in these last 48 hours especially?
TENNYS SANDGREN: Learned about myself? I'm happy with being resilient. I'm happy with that. It's not easy to come off some big wins, biggest wins of my career, crazy stages, like quarterfinals of a slam, that's crazy to me, and to deal with the stuff off the court as well.

To be able to do that and just focus on the tennis, to try and conduct myself correctly on the court, to make sure that I wasn't letting anything bother me or affect me, it was very important to me that I keep my head in the right place.

I was able to do that. I'm proud of myself for that.

Q. Do you think everything that happened on and off the court will change your life? Do you want that? Is that scary?
TENNYS SANDGREN: I feel like my life's always changing, for better or worse. I feel like we're very rarely standing still. We're very rarely stuck. I feel like even if it's just a little change, I feel like it can result in a big deal for every individual person.

This has certainly been a lot of large changes, one massive one, to have a result like this for me. But, you know, like I said, I'm just going to try to digest the information and keep trying to learn and grow and become the person I want to be, figure out how I can keep getting better in tennis.

I don't think 'holes' are the right word, but there are things I need to improve upon if I want to compete at this level, like quarterfinals of a slam against a player like I played against today. I wish him all the best. I think that he'll be holding some trophies in the near future. I wish him all the best.

Q. Among all these changes, there is also an economical change in your life.
TENNYS SANDGREN: Right. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I really don't care that much about money, so it doesn't really matter to me that much. The fact that I have resources to be able to pay for the things I'd like to, like a coach, continue to be able to do that, maybe have a physio travel with me on the road more, help my mom. She works real hard to support herself. I'd like to be able to help her some, too.

So that's cool. But the number going up in the bank account really doesn't matter to me that much. I try to work hard every day, and that's where I get my satisfaction from.

Q. Being myself a foreigner, I find it difficult to follow all what you say because you talk so fast.
TENNYS SANDGREN: Sorry.

Q. Do you always talk so fast or is only for us?
TENNYS SANDGREN: Depends if I have anything to say or not (smiling). Depends if I have anything to say. I hope you're able to understand what I was saying.

Q. Is not that you feel more pressure that you have to talk very quickly?
TENNYS SANDGREN: No. If I slow down, then my head will go past my words, then we're in trouble. Then we're in trouble, yeah.

Thank you, guys.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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