CHASE CHAMPIONSHIPS OF THE COREL WTA TOUR

November 19, 1997

Lindsay Davenport

Q. Lindsay, you're smoking the whole first set, hitting the ball very clean, pitching like Gary Maddoux. She falls down, gets up to play a little better. And then there was some questionable calls. Is that how you see the match?

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Kind of. I mean, you know, she's the type of player that always plays better when she's down. And I think a lot of pressure is taken off of her. And, you know, she was making a lot of errors, I think, in the beginning. And, you know, when she gets down, she starts to play a lot better. You know, a couple times, you know, maybe I wasn't aggressive enough to really put the match away. Especially in the third set. But, you know, she fought very hard and, you know, she played an unbelievable tiebreak. And, you know, those are the way some of those go. I had a ton of chances and at the end she had some chances and she came up with it today.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: I actually thought I played a lot better today than I was going to. You know, I didn't feel great coming in here. But, you know, I actually feel okay. And I thought I played pretty damn well. She played well at the end. And I think it's just been a long year. But it's the same for every player. I've had a great year, and it's unfortunate for me to end it this way. But, you know, I've got about a couple weeks to get over it and start over again.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Like I said, when she's down, she starts hitting the lines a lot more, becomes more aggressive. She played great until the end of the second set, and then in the beginning of the third she starts off by making a ton of errors again, and I was like... You know, she starts making them in again towards the end. I think she hit the ball great today, very low, very deep. It was tough for me to do a lot of stuff with the ball because it was coming so low. She fights hard. That's one of her great attributes, I think, is, you know, how well she fights and how well she thinks out there.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Yeah.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: I don't know. I hope that wasn't the problem. I don't think it was. I mean, we both fought pretty hard there to win it. And, you know, I didn't put her away, and she played better at the end. And, I don't know, I just -- you know, today I didn't quite nail -- hammer in the nail all the way or something like that. Put the nail in the coffin or something like that. It's too late for me.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, it's kind of both. It's a tough loss in the sense that, you know, it could have gone farther, could I have made a run for this tournament also? And it's not so disappointing in terms of, God, I won two tournaments, two finals and, you know, I had an unbelievable year; my best year so far. That's how I'm going to have to look at it, because the match is over and, unfortunately, I cannot do anything more in this tournament. So for the next six weeks before Australia I'll try to build on the year I've had and looking forward to improving it down under.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, he has a habit of overexaggerating a bit sometimes. It's hard to tell when you're playing out there. All I know is she hit some unbelievable shots at some really important times and that's why she won the match.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Well, you know, in every match there's going to be some close calls. I thought a few could have been out that were called in. On a whole it was pretty good. One time they missed a right call, but that's not a big deal. We still played the point anyways. Maybe a couple calls could have gone the other way, but they didn't, and that's what tennis is. That's why we don't have, you know, computers and electronic things going.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: Sometimes. Not as much as we used to, but sometimes.

LINDSAY DAVENPORT: No. I couldn't understand that one. Okay. Thank you.