CITI OPEN

July 31, 2022

Reilly Opelka

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You have a well-known interest in art. Through your travels on the tour, do you have a favorite museum that you enjoy visiting? Have you had a chance to visit the National Galley of Art here in Washington?

REILLY OPELKA: Just being in Europe, spending a lot of time... Tennis takes up a good amount of my life, but not all of it. We practice two hours a day, I'm in the gym, then my day is done. Times in Europe where I had five, six hours in a row with nothing to do. That's kind of how I got into art, going to museums on my downtime.

Actually haven't been to any museums in D.C. just because last year was difficult, a lot of things were still closed, we didn't have the event the previous year. This will definitely be my year to do it.

My favorite museum is probably the Prado museum in Madrid. That's one of my favorites. But, yeah, I'll definitely have some time this week for sure to stop by.

Q. How are you feeling personally about your game these days, gearing up towards these next few weeks?

REILLY OPELKA: Yeah, I'm feeling all right. I haven't had the most amount of practice I'd like. I was a little injured last week. I think my hip, we kind of got it calmed down for now.

I'm excited to play on my favorite surface. My favorite time of the year to play. I like playing in the summer. It's hot, the balls are alive, the conditions are fast. That's usually when I play my best tennis.

Then, of course, being at home is the biggest luxury of it all. I'm feeling all right. Just a matter of physically how I hold up.

Q. I feel like it's almost the cliché question. American men coming up, the volume of players now in the top 50, do you feed off of that? What do you think about the group of you that are making runs?

REILLY OPELKA: I don't feed off it at all. Why should I? It's not a competition. It's an international sport. I don't feed off of what they're doing. I don't feed off of how many we have in the top 50. It's an individual international sport.

I mean, it's nice having them around just to hang out with. I feel as long as we have got them in the top hundred, top 50, just to have some friends on tour, that's all I care about. I don't look at it any other way. They don't push me more than Medvedev or Tsitsipas or one of those guys. It's the same.

Q. To the casual viewer that watches you play, you have quite a service game. Is that an unfair assumption, that people only think of you as the serve-bot? Is there something you would like to do to convince people your game is more than one-dimensional? How do you overcome that kind of perception?

REILLY OPELKA: No, I don't think that. I don't really care about that perception, let's say. Anyone that knows anything about tennis will know that you can't be top 20 in the world with one shot. You just can't. If they disagree with that, there's no point of having a conversation. Probably not the most educated person in the tennis business that there is.

Isner made 40 million doing it. I think it's a decent career to follow, decent career path to kind of copy.

Q. What would you say about your relatively new coach Neville Godwin? You have not spent long together. He said you have the potential to be a top 10 player in the world. What can you tell me about that relationship?

REILLY OPELKA: Yeah, I definitely think I have top 10 potential. It's hard to predict. I think it's actually almost impossible to predict a top 10 guy. It's so rare, few. I think Alcaraz is the only one you can confidently say a year ago he was a top 10 guy.

A lot can happen. There's a lot of different surfaces, a lot of different conditions throughout the year that factor that.

I think I have top 10 potential. I think a lot of guys do. It's just a matter if they do it or not. There's a lot of guys with top 10 potential. A lot of guys that want it that haven't been top 10.

I think it's kind of a matter of how well you do within yourself to build your own team, to make the right decision on scheduling, who to hire, who to bring in and whatnot. I think there's so many factors to be a top 10 guy.

Q. How do you find the courts here in terms of speed? You spoke about the speed of the hard courts. You live in Florida, you played Indian Wells. What is your favorite hard court surface?

REILLY OPELKA: Yeah, these are playing quick. I think the biggest thing is the ball. I mean, we've been playing with a Dunlop ball prior to this. The ball is the biggest factor I would say right now. The Wilson US Open ball is definitely a lot quicker than the Dunlop ball.

I only hit yesterday for about 40 minutes, my first day kind of hitting in the last week or so. Just kind of recovering from some hip issues. I think based on my practice yesterday, I would say it was very live. The conditions were quite lively, even compared to Atlanta which is known to be quite fast.

I think the biggest difference is the ball. They were using a Dunlop ball, and we're using a Wilson ball here. I think that one travels through the air a little bit quicker.