ATP CUP

January 4, 2022

Alexander Zverev

Jan-Lennard Struff

Team Germany

Press Conference

Team Germany - 2

Team USA - 1

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Jan and Sascha from Team Germany. Sascha, can you reflect on two great singles wins there for you and Jan.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Yeah, I think great effort by Jan to start off. I think we needed that win. We needed to get on the board, and it made my job easy, as well. If you're up 1-0, it's obviously much nicer to play, much nicer to be on the court. Credits to Jan, I think he played a fantastic match today.

Q. Maybe a similar question but just in terms of motivation, inspiration, seeing how hard Jan fought to get his win, how that motivated you.

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Well, look, it's great that Jan won, but I'm always very motivated. Always very motivated to play. Never really lacking that.

But I think, yeah, for the team, it was great. For Jan to beat John, especially in these conditions, which I think suit John quite well. It was a great effort, I think a very high-level match.

Q. (Question off microphone.) Straight-set wins. How do you assess your form?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: It's good. Today's match I think was different towards the first one. I think obviously Taylor is somebody that serves a lot bigger, hits the ball maybe a lot harder.

Yeah, we're here as a team. We won one, we lost one. We still want to give ourselves a chance to qualify for the semis.

Q. (Question off microphone.)

JAN-LENNARD STRUFF: It was important to get the break at the end. I played him many times, and won some sets in tiebreaks. Broke him, yeah, last matches maybe once, lost five times against him. He was beating 5-0 head to head.

For me personally was very important, but more important was the win for Germany. And then Sascha played a very good match again today. Very happy that, yeah, our team won, that we could get the win for Germany, and hope we gave ourself a chance to come to the semis.

Q. I heard you say five losses on court. I checked the stats on the ATP site and it shows four losses, unless one happened at a challenger level or something.

JAN-LENNARD STRUFF: No, no challenger. We played in -- yeah, it was kind of exhibition tournament, but that counts for me, because it was like under competition circumstances. Yeah, it was like 11-13 or something and third set was a tiebreak.

For me matches like this counts because we both wanted to win that one. Yeah, so for me it was 0-5; maybe for the stats it was 0-4.

Q. If Canada beats Great Britain tonight, you've got all four teams with 1-1 records. Are you going to bring a mathematician in to see what you have to do to make it to the semifinals?

JAN-LENNARD STRUFF: Yeah, obviously it's going to be very tough. Yeah, let's see. Great Britain need to lose one game. Of course it would be best if they lose today I think, but let's see. It's very tough matches coming up. Both teams have strong players.

Yeah, we will see tonight what our situation is for the next match, and then we try to win our match against Canada, and that's all we can do now.

Q. Struffy, what do you think made the difference today to allow you to score the win against Isner?

JAN-LENNARD STRUFF: What did you say? Difference to the last matches, or...

Q. Yeah, what do you think made the difference?

JAN-LENNARD STRUFF: I don't know. Sometimes in matches it's just one or two points. I had a feeling I stayed very aggressive the whole match. I was serving pretty well in the third set. I think I saw the stats, and he just won three points on my service game in the third set. I think that put him a bit under pressure that I was very focused on my games.

Yeah, I was returning pretty well. I was fighting very hard. So I kind of showed him that I'm there every time, and I think that was the key.

Q. Sascha, your thoughts on today? As you have played, you've had a couple of matches under your belt now, how good are you feeling about the way you're hitting the ball and if you had to be changing anything, what would you be adjusting?

ALEXANDER ZVEREV: Look, it's the second match of the season. I'm still getting into it. I'm still trying to adjust, but I'm happy with how things are. I've played two very high-level players. Taylor, I lost to him in Indian Wells, so it was nice to get back out on court with him.

And, yeah, I mean, look, I know I still have things to improve. I'm practicing every day. I'm practicing quite a lot, I think. Maybe "the" most out of anybody here.

Yeah, I'm happy with the wins. I'd much rather be with two wins under my belt than two losses. That's for sure.