BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL

January 6, 2024

Holger Rune

Press Conference

H. RUNE/R. Safiullin

6-4, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: Holger, you're having a really good week here so far in Brisbane. Take us through the match today.

HOLGER RUNE: Yeah, was a good match. I started very well, returning strong, putting him under some big pressure. Managed to keep up my good service games. Yeah, good early break. He broke me back. A little bit of pressure under my own serve, but managed to keep on holding serve when it mattered. Took him in the tiebreak when it was important.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You've had four matches here, and they've all been quite tough ones. How does this affect your preparation for Melbourne?

HOLGER RUNE: Very good. It's exactly how I wanted it to be, to get the most amount of matches as possible. One to go tomorrow. I'm going to try to make it in my favor again.

Yeah, it's been a great week so far. Playing some good matches against some great players. Yeah, I'm excited for tomorrow and then Melbourne.

Q. What would actually winning a title do for the confidence?

HOLGER RUNE: Yeah, it's good. It's a great challenge tomorrow to try to see where I'm at when it really matters. If I want to do what I want to do in Melbourne, I'm going to be under a much bigger amount of pressure if I'm going to stay on the last day on Sunday.

Tomorrow's a great challenge to see how I handle everything. I'm just going to try to do it as good as possible.

Q. What are your main goals for this season?

HOLGER RUNE: I mean, now the goal is to finish the job tomorrow and just to do as good as possible, to try to maintain that level that I've been doing this week in Melbourne.

Q. You came here this week as the top seed. With Rafa, all the attention has been going one way. Has it been a strange feeling for you, affected how you prepared this week?

HOLGER RUNE: I knew that Rafa was going to come here. It's been a great tournament. I think we also had Andy here. Grigor is here. Rafa was here. It's been a good field. I think a bunch of good players. It's been an exciting tournament I think.

Was a very good match yesterday with Rafa and Thompson. Thompson managed to win it. It was very entertaining to watch.

Q. A little bit sad you don't get to have the Rafa match in the final? Something you would have been looking forward to.

HOLGER RUNE: Yeah, but this is tennis. Now I get either Thompson or Grigor. I think I'm just focusing on the match that I have to play. Whether it's that opponent or that opponent, that's not really up to me. I just got to stay focused on my things.