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BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL

January 1, 2019

Nick Kyrgios

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

N. KYRGIOS/R. Harrison

7-6, 5-7, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: First question for Nick, please.

Q. Nick, 45 aces over three sets. Can you do better than that?
NICK KYRGIOS: I don't think so. I needed every single one of them today, though.

Q. You were worried you were maybe a little bit rusty and you said on court you felt just like that. How happy are you to get through against Ryan? He's pretty tough.
NICK KYRGIOS: Yeah. Just considering how much I hit during the off season and to still get through is pretty impressive. I mean, my serve is always something that I know that I can go back on, and today it came through again, but, yeah, I mean considering how much I actually put in on court over the off season, I'm pretty happy just getting through that.

Q. When you have a match like that where your serve is working well but maybe the rest of your game isn't necessarily, what are you telling yourself or what are you trying to manage to get through?
NICK KYRGIOS: Just hold my serve. That's it, literally. I was just like I'm just going to -- I mean, he was serving well today as well. I thought that his serve improved a lot since the last time I played him, which was last year at this time, so his serve was a lot harder to read, I thought, this time around, and I was really struggling to get a read on where he was serving on big points.

Q. Your spider bite, was it itchy or does it annoy you?
NICK KYRGIOS: It's not completely healed on my left foot, but it's definitely getting a lot better. I could feel it, for sure, in my left shoe. From where it was four or five days ago, it's unbelievable now. It was really, really bad four or five days ago. I was questioning whether I was going to be ready to play. As I said, it was to the point where I couldn't fit into my shoe, so it was pretty bad.

Q. That's pretty scary. Were you scared?
NICK KYRGIOS: I mean, there's worse things in the world. I'm lucky enough to have a hospital close by. So pretty lucky.

Q. New Year's Day, first match of the year, big crowd out there. Are there nerves that are different than say when you play on centre court at one of the slams or what was the emotion walking out there today?
NICK KYRGIOS: No, I wasn't feeling any pressure or anything like that at all. I just was eager to kind of just get the match done. I knew I wasn't going to play great, but obviously, again, my serve got through, and I was just happy to get through. Hopefully my level of tennis improves a little bit though.

Q. Nick, you alluded to in your on-court interview. Obviously you're really happy for Alex and John, because you're mates, and I guess it does shift the spotlight off you just a fraction as well, which I guess you're not that unhappy about. There's expectations from them this week as well, not just you. Does that help you at all?
NICK KYRGIOS: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't know if the spotlight is off of me. I was practicing the other day, I had 13 cameras on my court; had a spider bite, that seemed to be the biggest story over the Aussie summer. So let's don't act as if attention is not on me. But, yeah, obviously it does help having guys like that winning matches. Yeah, I don't know if the spotlight has shifted at all.

Q. Chardy next. I don't know if you guys have played before, but he's obviously a veteran. He's been around a lot. What do you expect there?
NICK KYRGIOS: He's one of my good mates on tour. We always practice together. Pretty much every event, we're always looking to get some hits in. We know how relaxed we are together on court. We always play pretty well against each other. So I'm really looking forward to it. I know that he knows what I'm going to bring, and I know how good he can be. I thought ever since he won that challenge last year, he really found form, and he's a really good player. So I'm looking forward to it. But, again, I'm not thinking about it. I'm just going to enjoy the rest of my day and go out there tomorrow and do the same thing.

Q. Do you go out and work on specific things from what you weren't happy with today or do you just hit the reset button on what's to come?
NICK KYRGIOS: No, I don't really work on specifics. But I know that I do need to get better. My returns were okay today. I was pretty poor -- everything I did was pretty poor, except for my serve today. So I know that that needs to get better. But that will come with more matches. I think the more matches I play, the more time on court I have, I think that'll get better.

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