ROLEX PARIS MASTERS

November 3, 2020

David Goffin

Press Conference

N. GOMBOS/D. Goffin

6-4, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. I was just wondering, you hit 46 unforced errors and you looked a bit flat out there. Are you still kind of suffering from the coronavirus, like the effects it had on you, or is it just something different that you're trying to find your form at the moment?

DAVID GOFFIN: No, you know, I didn't expect anything coming here. You know, I was just happy to come just to test a little bit, you know, because it was not great in Antwerp. I was still breathing heavily. Then I started to take a week off and not play in Vienna and make another test here just to see how it is.

So of course it's, for me, the last tournament of the season, just to see how it was, you know, recovering from the virus and then physically to see where I was.

Just because I wanted to play, as well. So it's not an easy situation to deal with, but I tried to do my best. And that's all.

Q. Can you take us back a little bit through the tiebreak? It looked like you had things in pretty good control, and then Norbert won I believe the last five points. How difficult is it to see, you know, the match like that get away from you point by point?

DAVID GOFFIN: Yeah, you know, if you look at the match it's not really important now. But of course if you look even if I didn't play well I had a lot of opportunities, I had the breakpoints in the first set, Love-40, and then I came back at 5-4 and then not a good game.

Then in the second I'm 4-2, game point for 5-2 double break, and then 6-3 in the tiebreak. Even if I played really bad I had opportunity to win that match.

But at 6-3 I made good serve. Really close to make an ace, and then he returned well. He was solid until the end. I made mistakes of course, but quite fast, with the ball so fast, and he was really solid at the end. Didn't miss. So I made mistakes, and I tried to go.

But, yeah, he won a lot of matches from the quallies, so he was in good shape. So the match, he deserve. I think he was more solid at the end.

Q. Obviously it's been a difficult end to the season, but it's been a strange year for everyone. So for you, what's the mentality like entering the off-season? Are you able to just forget about the last few weeks and look ahead, or has it been exceptionally difficult for you just to deal with the last few weeks?

DAVID GOFFIN: You know, now I just wanted to see where I am in this tournament, but now I'm very happy that -- I mean, very happy that the season is over because now I can try to look more in the future, in 2021 try to make preparation and try to recover from everything mentally, physically, and try to prepare another season.

So it's, yeah, I'm happy that's over (smiling).

Q. A similar question. At the French Open you talked about how you were kind of maybe struggling a bit, I don't know, mentally with the restrictions and all of that stuff. Tell us how you feel mentally now.

DAVID GOFFIN: Now I'm feeling better, you know, because I wanted to play, I was happy to be on the court. But it was not my best. But, you know, I had some good moments in the two matches I made, in Antwerp and here.

You know, it was at the French Open, it was just a very bad match because it was French Open, good opponent. But I wanted to come back for the end of the year. Then the virus came and it was not the best moment of the year. But now was happy to be back on court to try different things.

Of course I didn't have any practice, enough practice. I was not ready, of course, but I knew it before. My coach knew it. We tried to did our best and tried to see where I was.

Q. Speaking of the off-season, it might be more difficult than other years planning the off-season just because of everything going on. I was wondering, do you know how any of this is going to affect your plans, or are you confident you'll be able to have a proper preseason training before Australia?

DAVID GOFFIN: I think it's going to be okay. We will find some solutions to make a good preparation.

You know, it looks like we have to leave earlier for the quarantine in Australia, so we will try to make a good preparation. You know, it doesn't matter what kind of preparation. It's just more like to have a preparation, to have a project, because now from since we started again after the first confinement, it was just day after day, week after week, we didn't know if the tournament will be hold or not, and week after week we were traveling and we played as many tournaments as we can.

But now if the preparation we have few weeks that we can, like, we can make a preparation, a schedule maybe like because we didn't do it the last few weeks. So let's hope to do well and try to be ready for 2021.