U.S. OPEN

September 8, 1994

Jonas Bjorkman

JONAS BJORKMAN: What do you mean with "established"?

JONAS BJORKMAN: Yeah, hopefully. I mean, I think I still played a good game today. It was just that Michael was better today. Of course, I can play a little bit better, but I think I played really good. Hopefully, I can keep playing like this now for at least the rest of the year, and then start over for next year.

JONAS BJORKMAN: If he was returning harder?

JONAS BJORKMAN: I don't know, maybe he was going for it a little more, and, I mean, he started to return better, but, I don't know, I had some easy mistakes when I -- I should have held to go up 2-All and maybe I should have had a chance to break him back to 5-4, I had a forehand return that I missed, but it could have been a five set match.

JONAS BJORKMAN: I don't know, I mean, the people out here want to see more tennis, so I had them on my side, which is unbelievable. Can't be better to play a match when you're playing good and you have a crowd with you when you do good points. I mean, that's a great feeling you have.

JONAS BJORKMAN: I mean, he's serving well, maybe today he was a little bit up and down, but the first two sets, even if I had a lot of breakpoints, he still served well and came up -- always came up with good serves at breakpoints, so if he can keep his serve and return like he did in the end, I think he would be a tough guy to beat here.

JONAS BJORKMAN: He said, "It was a tough match," and he said, that was bad luck, that I played a good match and he said he was lucky he did escape just in the four sets, maybe he thought it could have been five sets.

JONAS BJORKMAN: I don't know, I mean, I can just say for my situation. I know he's a good player, even if he's been playing in the Grand Slams, he's still number four or five and he's winning other matches, he's been playing really well in Germany and he almost won every tournament there. So maybe he's been unlucky to not get the best performance he can in the Grand Slams.

JONAS BJORKMAN: I don't know what he's done best -- he's never been in the semis?

JONAS BJORKMAN: No, I mean, hardcourt is a surface where he can play really well on, so, that's may be a surprise for me that he hasn't been better before, because he's a good player on hardcourt.

JONAS BJORKMAN: It's hard to say, but hopefully it was me who played as good as I could today and gave him a tougher match.

JONAS BJORKMAN: I have -- you're disappointed that you lost because every match you lose you're disappointed, but I have to be happy with my tournament here and it's good that -- it was really fun to play, I mean the crowd was just unbelievable, I think. It just helped me out to maybe get back in the match after I took the third and hopefully I can be back here next year playing as good as I did today and hopefully better.