BNP PARIBAS OPEN

October 16, 2021

Taylor Fritz

Press Conference

N. BASILASHVILI/T. Fritz

7-6, 6-3

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. What do you take as positives from this experience?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, a lot of I guess parts of my game are working well and I'm excited to kind of keep playing the way I'm playing and finish the year strong.

I know I have that self-belief right now that I'm confident, I'm playing well, trusting my game, motivated to kind of keep it going.

I mean, yeah, just really tough one today.

Q. He's such a big hitter. Can you talk about that, how he compares with other players, handling the power.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, it was really tough because I wanted to come out and play aggressive and attack, but I just really felt like I couldn't get many chances to. I think all the chances I got to be aggressive were off of my serve. I'd serve and maybe he wouldn't be able to crush the return, then I could actually attack. Other than that, I just felt like it was incredibly tough for me to ever get an opportunity to go big.

I had a lot of chances. It's tough because I got all those chances and breakpoints kind of from being solid and him missing. It's kind of tough on those breakpoints then to just pull the trigger on balls that I didn't really feel comfortable with. I didn't feel like I had good looks to kind of pull it on a big point.

He was just really solid.

Q. Can you compare his forehand and backhand with the other big hitters.

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, his backhand, he definitely hits harder than anybody on tour. The way that it comes through the court so hard and flat and deep, nothing you can really do. Usually I'm pretty good at fighting off the balls at the backhand. It was a bit tough today. He hit a lot of good backhand lines.

I felt a lot of times I was kind of forced to go backhand cross because he played maybe a high ball up with his forehand to my backhand. I felt like I hit a pretty good backhand and he just crushed it.

The forehand, it's big but it's a lot spinier. I have a little more time to deal with it. It's still really jumping off the court. It's tough to attack. I think if I wanted to be more aggressive, I would have been opening myself up for a lot more mistakes just trying to hit big off of such a big ball.

The backhand, for sure, nobody hits it harder.

Q. You talked about having to silence your inner critic. How do you think you did with that today? How are you going to give yourself a little bit of a break to refresh?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, I think I did a good job today. I kept telling myself the whole match, even when I would get a little nervous or worried, I kept telling myself that I was going to win the match. I believed I was going to win it.

Like I said, I wanted to be aggressive but I really didn't get a lot of opportunities to. When he was serving, it was tough to get the opportunities to be aggressive. I got all my breakpoints, all my chances, kind of off of his mistakes. When he's giving me those opportunities, when he makes mistakes, we get into a breakpoint, I don't want to give him a freebie and let him off the hook.

I was just trying to be solid and maybe I could have, you know, pulled the trigger. I didn't really see any balls on my seven breakpoints that I felt confident really going for. It was kind of tough battling between maybe going for a shot that it's tough to go for, kind of like pressing it a little bit, or just being solid because that was working for me to get up those opportunities.