US OPEN

September 4, 2022

Casper Ruud

Press Conference

C. RUUD/C. Moutet

6-1, 6-2, 6-7, 6-2

THE MODERATOR: Four sets, 3 hours and 20 minutes, on to the next round. Your thoughts on your performance.

CASPER RUUD: Yeah, it was pretty well all around. A little bit up and down in the third set, but I think the scoreline lies a little bit when it comes to the sets that I won. 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 seems pretty easy, but it was tough. All the games we played, it was close. And I was fortunate in some situations to get the breaks here and there. Things were going my way.

Very happy with it. Yeah, happy that I didn't need to play over four hours today. So I'll, you know, take care of the rest of the day off and the day off tomorrow and be ready for the quarterfinal.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Seemed like it got a bit contentious at times. How were you able to compartmentalize and avoid the distractions?

CASPER RUUD: Yeah, you know, it was a match with some show here and there. It was pretty humid today, so honestly it was a bit of a challenge sometimes to keep cool.

But in these conditions, I know that I need to focus a lot on myself and keeping my head cool. I'm sweating a lot, so it takes a lot of energy for me to just always keep my hands and everything dry. So I didn't think too much about what happened, you know, around. Just tried to stay in the zone.

Corentin is a fun player to watch, he can come up with unbelievable trick shots, and even did some push-ups at a time. He's a fun player and a funny guy. It was a fun match in the end.

Q. As you mentioned, he does have those trick shots, but you had two around-the-net-post shots today and he had one. Can you talk a little bit, give us commentary on those two points, is there a thought process?

CASPER RUUD: Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm the guy to talk too much about trick shots because I don't have too many of them myself. I'm not the most flashy player. It's fun when you can hit a shot around the net. It's something you don't do every day, so it's fun they went down the line and inside. That was fun.

I think honestly the return I hit around the net was more impressive than the forehand around the net, even though the forehand was on quite an important point when I broke him the first time. I enjoyed both of them, of course, but a return from behind in the court around the net is not easy. Might be the last one I ever hit around the net, so I'll enjoy it today.

Q. I guess you're the first Norwegian to go to the Open quarterfinals.

CASPER RUUD: Yeah, I think so, too.

Q. Where does tennis rank in Norway in terms of popularity?

CASPER RUUD: I don't know. We have a Norwegian journalist here, so you can ask him. I'm not the one to reply.

Q. Tennis is not No. 1 there.

CASPER RUUD: No, we have winter sports that dominate and we have a new pretty good football player, in case you haven't heard of him, Haaland. He's doing pretty good at the moment. I think he scored like 10 goals in four or five matches in the Premier League already. He's the biggest athlete star we have in Norway, I think. A lot of people are watching him and the winter sports.

But we have obviously also a golfer who is top 10 in the world who people enjoy following. I guess also it's a little bit the same with tennis.

Tennis is not always too easy for I think Norwegians to follow, because we play in different time zones in a different part of the world all the time. It's not always easy to catch the right times to when I'm playing and all these things.

But it's growing, and I'm happy that it is.

Q. Can you talk about the challenges that Matteo will present. I think you played him a couple years ago here in the quarters.

CASPER RUUD: Yeah, he's dangerous obviously on all surfaces. I think this is probably one of his favorite tournaments. He's done very well many years in a row. I remember when he sort of had his breakthrough and made semis here. I believe it was maybe three or four years ago, and I think that was his first semis of a slam.

He's a couple years older than myself, so he's someone I have looked up to and sort of taken inspiration from from his career, because he broke into the top 10 three, four years ago, and has been able to keep a high level for many years already.

He will throw big serves, big forehands. He has big weapons. I think he has a beautiful slice from the backhand side that he likes to use, which can work well on these courts. They are pretty fast this year.

We played back in Gstaad a couple of weeks or months ago, so we know each other quite well. We played each other sometimes. It's going to be a tough challenge, for sure.

Q. Following up on your last answer, when you're successful against his serve, what is the key to that success?

CASPER RUUD: Good question. I played him I believe six times maybe, or five in my career, and it's been on hard court or clay. Different matches I tend to use a different strategy. Sometimes I try to step in, and sometimes I try to wait a little bit further back.

I haven't really -- what should I say -- cracked the code because it's not an easy code to crack, his serve. I think here on the hard court I will need to try to stay and neutralize it as good as I can. And I do like to sometimes hit some block returns just to get it in play.

I think that will -- not going to give away my strategy -- but I think I will try to do, sort of think like a goalkeeper and not let him pass me with his serve and get a lot of balls back in play.

When we played in Gstaad it was really fast conditions even though it was on clay, and it was bouncing a lot. So most of the times I stayed in and tried this strategy, which didn't work for all the match, but in the end I was able to win some key moments on it.

Let's see. But, yeah, you need to obviously guess right sometimes, and sort of see if you can try to read where he's going.

Q. Not just for this next match but in general as you go into the second week of a tournament like this, you're playing more top-level players, do you think more about, I don't want to hit bigger but to safer spots on the court, or, Oh, now I've got to go for more and go for the baseline more or the angles more, be more aggressive?

CASPER RUUD: Well, when you reach quarterfinals, this is the second time I do it, and I think depending on how the matches before have went or have gone, I think all players are probably facing some physical challenges, as well, because we can play very long matches. You need to take that into account, as well.

So sometimes if you are playing, maybe if you're a little hurt yourself or whatever, you can go for a little bit more risk, but if you're feeling well and strong and fit, knowing that maybe the other guy played four-and-a-half hours the match before, you will try to wear him out. It's plain and simple. You need to play on the physical part as well when you are playing best-of-five sets.

Obviously you have a strategy when you go out. If it doesn't work, you'll need to change it. But I don't think I will go for more dropshots than usual or more angles than usual.

I think I will try to play my game. I know last time we played, he beat me, so I will need to do something better than what I did last time against him. But I also know that I beat him the last time even though it was clay, so I will try to memorize what I did well or what I didn't do well in those past meetings that we played.