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AUSTRALIAN OPENJanuary 16, 2013Ryan HarrisonMELBOURNE, VICTORIA N. DJOKOVIC/R. Harrison THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Just too good tonight? RYAN HARRISON: Yeah, he played really well. Kind of getting broke in that first service game, giving a guy that's that good a little bit of a lead and letting him front run is just not the ideal way to start. I guess your first service game you want to at least stay in it. From then on out, he just had his foot on the gas pedal. It was tough because his balls were landing so hard and deep. Whenever your game plan is to try and take control of a guy and you're not getting balls to hit, you know, if I try to lace balls from six, eight feet behind the baseline I just look stupid and crazy. So it's just something where I know that level now. I've played him three times now. I played some of the best guys in the world. I'm not there yet. I know how to get there. I just got to keep working at it. Q. How is the court playing? RYAN HARRISON: It's a little faster than I remember last year. Kind of shoots off the court a little bit. I mean, it's a good court. I like playing on a surface like that. It's just, you know, he's going to be tough for anybody in this tournament. Q. How does the match compare to the previous two? RYAN HARRISON: Well, the first one was kind of tough to tell just because it wasn't a slam. Last year we played in Wimbledon. First one was in Cincinnati. I mean, it was very similar in the sense that I got behind early and then got some holds in. But most of the times when I was winning points in that match it was because he was just making random errors. I felt like tonight I was trying to push back a little bit. It just didn't go very well. Q. You sound like once you got broken in your first service game you were playing catch‑up the whole time after that. RYAN HARRISON: Yeah. I mean, I was never really at any point in time level. It was every set. The first time I actually started feeling a little bit of rhythm was when I was down a break early in the third. I won a long service game. I started getting a little bit of pep in my step and a little bit of rhythm. At that point you're down two sets and a break to the guy that's No.1 in the world. It would be 100 to 1 if not 1,000 to one or more at that point. Q. He's such a great returner. Do you see ways it could work? How complicated a task is it? RYAN HARRISON: It's tough because anything he puts his racquet on is usually coming back deep. In the future I'll probably have to do a better job of hitting my spots and not just hitting the gas pedal. Tonight I was just behind and I thought that the only way, because he wasplaying so ‑‑ sorry‑‑ so well off the ground, the only way I saw myself getting back in it was starting to serve really well and just putting a little pressure on him because I was serving so well. That's whenever I said, I'm going to gas my serve. So I started trying to smoke a few. He still kept putting them on the baseline, so it was tough. Q. Is this a tough loss or is it easy? RYAN HARRISON: It's one where you're disappointed because obviously leading up the last day and a half, two days, I'm all excited because I'm wanting to make a statement, wanting to win this match, wanting to step up. But, I mean, even if I somehow was able to win this match, with the way he played tonight, I've still have so far to go before I can play that level consistently. For me, it's just exciting because I don't look at it as unfortunate to play these guys early. I've been fortunate enough to play in the last eight, nine slams against top guys in every round. Hopefully in two, three years, whenever I am one of the top guys, I'm not going to be caught off guard by anything because I've seen this level and I know what to expect from these guys. I've just got to keep working and get there. That's the bottom line. Q. Do you see this as a good gauge to where your game is or more he came out blazing today? RYAN HARRISON: It's tricky because my goal for this year is to be a lot more assertive, a lot more aggressive. But like I talked about before, how are you going to take control of a guy whenever he's putting the ball a foot from the baseline and absolutely tagging it. At that point I'm going to have to get better at kind of what he does so well, which is like absorb and then send back. He doesn't just hit really hard and hit really good when he was on the offense. He takes deep, hard balls and then sends them back hard and deep. Any time I had a chance to attack a forehand or hit it, it came back at the exact same speed. That's what I have to get better at. I have to get better at being able to go side to side with those guys. I'm never going to be like Nadal where I play 10, 12 feet behind the baseline and hit it up and heavy like that. I mean, I'm just not going to be able to do that. My focus and my goal is to get to where I can play near the baseline, like he does. He's going to be an extremely good person for me to emulate as far as how I want to play my baseline points, because he stands on the baseline and he doesn't give any ground. Q. I thought you were creating more opportunities to keep the ball low on him. Just too hard to do off those kind of balls? RYAN HARRISON: You know, yeah, I got a couple where he missed a few here and there. But, you know, when you're playing a guy like, that he doesn't have a weakness, so to speak. You might have some shots that get errors every once in a while. It's kind of one of those deals where even Roger, who has one of most effective slices, he's not going to hit five, six, seven slices in a row. He hits one slice in order to get a ball to hit, and unfortunately I am not at the point yet where I can hit the slice, get the next ball, tag it. I get stuck hitting six slices in a row, and then I'm running side to side and I look like I'm on a string. Q. Have you been watching a lot of tape of Djokovic or other top guys you mentioned? RYAN HARRISON: I mean, I'm doing everything I can in order to get there. It's not from a lack of effort. I watched like an hour and a half of film of me playing Djokovic this morning to find out things I was doing successful. I've seen him play a ton on TV. When I go back to the States I'll be watching the rest of this tournament, if I'm not in doubles still. Like I said before, I love tennis, I love watching tennis, and I love learning. I see the way it needs to be played. It's hard to execute. You know, whenever you're playing guys at the highest level and you're in high‑intensity and high‑pressure situations. There's no trick to it. You've got to go out and work at it. And I will, and I'm gonna get there. It's just going to take some time. Q. Do you think it takes some draws that give you more of a head start into the tournament? You hit a bunch of walls early here. RYAN HARRISON: I'm not concerned about the draws at all. It doesn't matter to me the draws or things that you can't control. Like I said before, my goal is to win these tournaments one day. I'm not concerned about losing second, third, or fourth round. I want to get to the point where I'm good enough to win these tournaments eventually. And playing these guys and having the opportunity to play everybody‑‑ I've played on every stadium except for Ashe at this point, which is pretty exciting for me to know that moving forward in my career that I'm not going to have anything that I haven't seen before. Q. Did you get a chance to see what happened to Brian today? RYAN HARRISON: I saw that, yeah. I mean, I heard. Was it a torn meniscus and locked leg? Q. Three to four months out. RYAN HARRISON: It's sad. Brian is a great guy. Ever since he's been back in the locker room, I've enjoyed talking to him, talking tennis with him. It's really unfortunate. I wish him the best and a speedy recovery because he certainly deserves the opportunity as much as anyone, if not more. Q. Has it been strange to have no Roddick around here? RYAN HARRISON: I mean, not really. I talk to him pretty much every day since I've been here. He's been actively talking to me and helping me. Any time I ask him how he's doing, he's always doing great. He doesn't seem like he's depressed, to say the least. He's loving life. It's certainly strange that he's not the top dog right now. But as he would tell you guys, he's still ranked ahead of me, so... FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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