CHINA OPEN

October 3, 2023

Coco Gauff

Press Conference

C. GAUFF/P. Martic

7-5, 5-7, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations on a hard-fought victory. Can you give us your thoughts when you were down and she was serving for the match, how you were able to power true.

COCO GAUFF: Yeah, I was just trying to hit the return deep. I'd broken her a couple times, so I knew I could do it again. Today the struggle for me was honestly holding serve. I started off serving well in the first set. I think she started to be more aggressive with the return, so it made me second-guess myself.

But overall I'm happy with today, it was a mental victory, and happy I was able to get through.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Especially in the third set where you both were getting drawn into these extremely prolonged and varied rallies, it must have been exhausting. How do you keep your focus in situations like that, especially when maybe not everything is going for you on your own serve? What were you focusing on in that set to make sure you got through it?

COCO GAUFF: I think the points, I mean, they're long. I guess time-wise it's technically shorter. I don't know how long the longest point was, but I was just telling myself to keep suffering, it will be over in a couple seconds or maybe more than a couple seconds. I don't know. That's just like a mental thing.

But, like, yeah, regarding the fitness, I feel very confident in that. I knew I could outlast her. I just had to be consistent, but also aggressive.

I think today I played too passive, and she was really stepping inside of the court, running me off the court. So it's something that I am trying to get better at and making it more of a first instinct.

The games that I won, I won being aggressive.