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CITI OPEN

August 4, 2019

Daniil Medvedev

Washington D.C.

D. MEDVEDEV/P. Gojowczyk

6-2, 6-2

Q. This has been a very good week for you. How are you feeling overall?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, it's been a great week. I have been playing great tennis, first of all, and when I'm playing good tennis I can beat anybody, and that's what happened, and I am in the final facing Nick tomorrow.

Q. What do you think about facing Nick? Your last match in Rome was pretty close. What do you learn from that one?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Well, I was not ready. I got injured in Madrid, which I basically of course never say before the match to try to win, but I got injured in Madrid so I was not at all ready in Rome, but it was a tight match, and with guys like Nick and me, it always comes to one break of serve or to a tiebreak, so that's probably what we are both looking for tomorrow, just do our best on the return and stay solid, and that will be the key.

Q. You mentioned it a little bit with the return there, but is that kind of the adjustment you would make going from tonight to tomorrow's match?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Well, if I can play like tonight, I will be happy because I made a really great match, and yeah, I saw that Peter was not serving that great first serve percentage, so it gave me a lot of second serve to work with. But basically, as I said, I just need to be ready for Nick's serve. I need to figure out what I can do best because you cannot return every serve he hits you, so I need to do my best to return as much as I can, to return strong, and then to win him in the points.

Q. I saw you heading into the stadium before the match. It made me curious what you were doing during the previous semifinal and whether you watched any of the Tsitsipas-Kyrgios match?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, I watched the full first two sets and a lot in the third. I mean, it was a funny match with its up and downs, and finally which turned out to be an amazing match. When it's 9-7, I think, right, in the third tiebreaker, it's an amazing match.

Well, what I saw is that I need to stay solid, as I said. I need to stay solid, try to find my matches. That's what actually Stefanos was doing and almost won the match, got unlucky, so hopefully I can be lucky tomorrow.

Q. You touched on this a little bit, but playing Nick there's often a lot of ups and downs, he gets the crowd really involved in the matches. Are you prepared for that, and how do you kind of -- do you enjoy that type of atmosphere?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Depends what he does. Sometimes I enjoy what he does, sometimes not, and I think it's about everybody. Everybody sometimes enjoys him, sometimes not. I'm ready for it. I have been feeling very good in my head this tournament. I mean, didn't break a record -- I think I even didn't throw a record once, and that can be the record. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, yeah.

Q. You've obviously been playing so well since 2018, three titles last year, one this year. Has something changed in the way that you prepare for a match or the way that you go about these kind of week-long tournaments in between the Slams that you feel like has been able to elevate your game?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: No, it changed -- as I always say, it changed around two and a half years ago, two years ago where I started to take tennis more seriously, started to dedicate my life to tennis, like really do everything I can to be better on the tennis court, and of course it took some time. It cannot work in one week. So I think when I started to win a lot of titles and play really consistent, that's when it started to pay off.

Q. All of your matches this week were straight-set wins. Today was the most straightforward, let's say. I'm curious in your previous matches, which was the trickiest opponent for you to kind of figure out?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: It's tough to say because to be honest, all of them were tricky. Even today I broke straightaway, he broke me back with an amazing game, and in my mind I was like, wow, he plays like this, I have no chance, which was not the case, but with Tiafoe I was winning kind of easy and confident and then I missed like a few easy shots, and I got into a 5-All, which is not good, with Marin. He had set points, which I served an ace, so it was not easy. So yeah, all of the matches were tough.

Q. What happened two years ago that made you want to dedicate your life to tennis or make it more seriously?
DANIIL MEDVEDEV: What happened? Nothing much, but that's a moment when I -- because where I practice in France, I've been there for already five years, and first of all, I was traveling with two coaches around me. One of them is Gilles, who is with me all the time now, and at one moment I decided to start working with him, and we had a lot of conversations. We had a lot of -- on different things just in life. And I think he had some impact on me just as a friend that made me want to try for boat of us just work hard, and yeah, dedicate my life to tennis. So I would say it's more about him and about my wife, yeah, because we started dating this year -- the year I dedicated my life to tennis.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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