U.S. OPEN

August 30, 1993

Paul Haarhuis

Q. Paul, what happened-- why did it take you 44 minutes to win your first game in the match?

PAUL HAARHUIS: I started serving really bad, I thought, the first set, and the first couple games, and plus he played aggressive. You know, I wasn't playing that bad on his service games. I got a couple games on his service games. I got returns in, made him play volleys like I wanted to. I told myself, he's going to be coming in on first, second serves and I can hit a lot of volleys and I can get some rallies going, but I just couldn't play my first serve in, and hit some doublefaults at crucial times and it went really fast. But, you know, it's best of five here and, you know, of course the second set is very crucial. If I-- if he serves 5-4 or if I lose a tiebreaker, he's up two sets to Love and, you know, it's--

Q. When you were down 6-5 in the second set, and you had-- he missed an overhand, backhand overhand, and then you had a dropshot, this is-- actually, this is in the 12th game, if you remember it, you had a lob and he came in with an overhand backhand, did you think he was going to put that one in? He put it in the net; do you remember that?

PAUL HAARHUIS: I was surprised that he got to it. I didn't-- I thought it was a really good lob I hit. But, you know, he's very tall.

Q. And on the lob, you were-- it was at 8-8 in the tiebreaker, do you remember the dropshot-- rather the dropshot you had?

PAUL HAARHUIS: Yeah, I just tried to play the shot, just for the crowd.

Q. Did you at any time think that you were out of the match or at any time think that he was out of the match?

PAUL HAARHUIS: Well, no, cause I would have thought down two sets to Love it would have been very tough to come back, but I wasn't down two sets to Love and 4-Love in the third-- in the fourth up two breaks, you know, I had-- I still wasn't sure I was going to win, because he can just put the pressure on you and hit some good shots, big shots and maybe get the game rolling again, and, you know, I kind of-- today I watched Ferreira against Korda and it was kind of a similar match like in the fourth, fifth set. Korda went up a bit and got the break back and stayed 5-4 to win it and I wasn't sure that I was going to win for sure, because even after when I was serving 4-5-- 5-4, it was very tough.

Q. He beat you in the Grand Slam of tennis in 1991, do you --

PAUL HAARHUIS: Yeah, bitter loss.

Q. Was it --

PAUL HAARHUIS: Yeah, yeah I mean, of course, it's always tough to lose. I was only one set over him there and he takes the tournament and it would have been nice to win the tournament myself, but it wasn't much money.

Q. Thank you.

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