LAVER CUP

September 25, 2021

John Isner

Denis Shapovalov

Patrick McEnroe

Press Conference

ISNER-SHAPOVALOV/Berrettini-Zverev

4-6, 7-6, 10-1

Team Europe - 3

Team World - 1

THE MODERATOR: An inspired tiebreaker. How good does it feel to get that first point on the board for Team World?

JOHN ISNER: Yeah, no, it's huge. We have never been down 4-0, but we've certainly been down 3-1 before. With how this format is, with everything worth two points tomorrow, it's game on.

Denis and I, I think, did a very good job bringing energy tonight. It could have been very easy to maybe play a deflated match. We got off to a bad start too, but we kept our energy up and it carried us through.

THE MODERATOR: Denis, with what you saw tonight in your tennis, are you positive going into the weekend?

DENIS SHAPOVALOV: Yeah, definitely super positive. As well I want to say if we weren't motivated before, apparently Sascha Zverev was saying that's the last point we're going to get, so we're definitely super hungry to come back and try to win every single match. We're going to fight for every single point tomorrow.

THE MODERATOR: Patrick, 3-1, must feel a hell of a lot better than 4-0?

VICE-CAPTAIN PATRICK McENROE: It would be nice to be up 3-1, but we were so close in both, especially the second and third singles matches, so we were right there. But as these guys said, it was awesome to see the energy from both John and Denis. They really pulled each other through. Awesome performance. We're feeling good about tomorrow.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. How concerned were you after the start, losing the first set?

JOHN ISNER: No, honestly we weren't that concerned. Certainly things didn't look that good. We were down 3-0 and we lost the first set. We didn't play a great first set. I think we got it back on serve. We kind of just let that first set slip away.

But we were seeing the ball pretty good, I thought, after that. Again, in this format, just try to win one set and then take your chances in the tiebreaker, and that's what we did.

We didn't have those tiebreakers go our way in singles, but at least we got one of them to fall our way.

Q. Denis, to you, how encouraging to you and uplifting was that crowd?

DENIS SHAPOVALOV: Yeah, it was definitely a pretty crazy environment, especially towards the end. Just fun to be out there. Johnny was doing a good job of really getting them involved, and I felt like our energy was super high and they were feeding off of that.

Definitely going to be necessary for the next couple days to have a good fan base. Today I think they were super electric, especially, you know, having been down 3-0 and it's late in the day, they were still there, every point with us. It definitely means so much for us.

Q. Patrick, you were saying you'd much rather be up 3-1 and that's obvious, but how much of a relief is it to at least have one point on the board at the end of the first day?

VICE-CAPTAIN PATRICK McENROE: It's huge. Gives us I think some great momentum going into the first match tomorrow. We're very optimistic. The crowd, you know, got totally inspired. They got inspired because of the way these guys played and the energy they showed.

We are very, very happy to be on the board.