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THE CHAMPIONSHIPSJuly 14, 2018Alfie HewettGordon ReidWimbledon, London, England HEWETT-REID/Gerard-Olsson 6-1, 6-4 THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Gordon, that was a hell of a first set, wasn't it? It was important to impose yourself? GORDON REID: Definitely, yeah. They've got a dangerous game. They're both big servers. They like to get forward, put us under pressure, rush us. It was important to come out firing, try to stay on top of the points early. I felt we did that really well in the first set. Q. Were you feeling good this morning straight off? ALFIE HEWETT: Yeah, I felt quite tired when I woke up this morning. Body was quite sore. Kind of skipped the gym, saw the physio instead. We both kind of regrouped last night. We left here around half nine last night. Made sure we recovered well. But I felt good out there in that first set. I think we both felt quite good out there, so yeah. Q. How does this win measure up against the previous two? ALFIE HEWETT: I think they're all special. Every year to come back and win it, it's tougher each year. People kind of expect you just to win it. We know that's not the case. There's a lot of strong guys out there. Yesterday's match and even today's match kind of proved how strong the field is. Q. How different do you feel as a pair compared to two or three years ago? You were 18 when you first won it. More mature, senior now. GORDON REID: Yeah, a lot more mature now (smiling). We've been playing together about four years now. We keep getting better every year as a partnership. There's not too many teams that are actually sticking together each tournament at the moment, apart from maybe us and the French guys. I think that's something that really helped us over the years. We've got a strong bond on court. I think we make ourselves very hard to beat. Yeah, hopefully we can continue to improve in the future. Q. Dynamics changed between you? GORDON REID: A little bit. I still sort of lead on court. Obviously Alfie has improved a lot in the last couple years in his tennis. I think emotionally, as well, he's managed keep that under wraps a lot better. ALFIE HEWETT: Not so much yesterday (smiling). GORDON REID: I think the way we work on court is similar to even a couple years ago. Q. Gordon, the Invictus Games will have wheelchair tennis for the first time. How important is this Wimbledon stage you get? Have you seen the increase of interest because of it? GORDON REID: Yeah, it's really important. We can't thank the club and the tournament enough for the opportunity that they give us to play on those stages. The Grand Slams are the best opportunity for us to showcase the sport, get more fans interested in what we're doing. The fact we get to play on big courts, you saw how many people were out there enjoying the match today. It means a lot to us. I kind of touched on it on court. When we get that opportunity, when we get the opportunity to play on TV, have that coverage, it's the opportunity to inspire younger people, other people with disabilities to get out and play tennis, play another sport, get healthy. That's something that's really important because we were both in that situation ourselves at one point. Q. The game in the second set, moving ahead one point, was there a moment you thought they would kick on and get that, you'd have to do it in a decider? What did you say to each other to rally yourselves? ALFIE HEWETT: No, I think we stayed in the present moment quite well. Even the games that we were losing we were in. It was deuce, advantage, or we were up in them. We felt quite confident out there we could keep it close and hold out the set. I think we just believed and backed ourselves in our shots and what we do on court. The first set really proved to us that when we're just flowing around the court, hitting the way we want to, there's nothing really they can do. We expected them to come out in the second set and do things differently, and they did a little bit. Our intensity maybe dropped. At the crucial time in that second set, we stepped it back up. Q. Any difference today in the crowd support you had compared to last year or the year before? ALFIE HEWETT: Better this year. GORDON REID: We kind of said before, last year was going to be hard to beat. I think even today was even better. There were certain stages in that match where there were very few seats left inside the court. So, you know, that's awesome for us. They were as loud as ever today. Obviously getting behind us, most of them. Yeah, it's always good fun to play in front of that. Q. In terms of the sport on a wider level, is it still growing at the rate you want it to? Does more need to be done? GORDON REID: I think it's a really exciting time for the sport at the moment, especially at the top of the game. I think the slams are doing a lot for the wheelchair tennis as a whole. It's getting better and better and improving every year, especially here. Yeah, I think there's a bit of change going on at the moment in the ITF with wheelchair tennis, exploring how the future of the sport is going to look. I think there may be some change coming up soon. I think it's really an exciting time to be involved in the sport. Q. Are you involved in that? GORDON REID: Yeah, I think the guys at the ITF wheelchair department are in constant conversation with a lot of the players. They're asking for our opinion and our feedback. Hopefully we can help to shape what the future looks like. Q. Pretty silly question, but third Wimbledon title now. You have another big week next week in Nottingham. How much confidence will it give you going onto a hard court? ALFIE HEWETT: A lot of confidence. Moments like yesterday and moments like today really build us as a team. We'll go into next week, you know, with that confidence, just try and enjoy it, to be honest. There's a lot of pressure, a little bit of a stressful situation the last couple of days. Next week is a chance to get back on the court and just enjoy it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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