ROLAND GARROS

May 24, 2022

Henri Laacksonen

Press Conference

H. LAAKSONEN/P. Martinez

2-6, 6-4, 6-4, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: Congrats. How difficult was it to not finish the match yesterday, two sets and come back today? Were the conditions different?

HENRI LAACKSONEN: Yeah, I mean I'm happy with my win and I wasn't very happy that we had to stop yesterday because finally I was getting going a little bit on my match. I started to play better, I had not a great start, a slow start, I was doing a lot of mistakes.

And then at least in the second set I started to play a bit better.

So it didn't help me a lot because once I got it going I started to feel more comfortable and, yeah, today I basically had to start all over again. I didn't feel like I had a great start today either. Fortunately I was a break up, so I had a little bit time there to get into the match again and, yeah, I felt like I played a bit better, but, yeah, still a few up-and-downs on the match and a bit too slow start I feel like. But in the end it was a solid performance.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. How do you feel now that you have finally gotten through this first round, because I know you've got bad and good memories from last year.

HENRI LAACKSONEN: Yeah, actually I have only good memories from last year. Sure, I got injured, but then, yeah, I qualified last year, I won tough matches which I could have lost and then I played two great matches, I started to play actually very good tennis. So I was happy with that one.

I think it also helped I was talking positive myself from last year. I also like the conditions here, it's a bit slower and on best of five you have always a little bit more time to make mistakes and trying to get the rhythm and finding your game.

So even I had a poor start for basically the whole season and I didn't win any matches on clay, I wasn't too concerned about it because, yeah, I mean, I like the conditions here, it's best of five, like I said, and hopefully you have a chance.