US OPEN

September 5, 1998

Mary Pierce

Q. Very quick match today. Did you get the kind of work in that you had hoped in preparation for the next round?

MARY PIERCE: I felt pretty happy with my play today. I didn't think I served as well as I wanted to. I was missing my first serve -- my first serve percentage wasn't as high as I'd like it to be. Other than that, today I had a lot of fun out there, trying to do some different things coming in, hitting some dropshots.

MARY PIERCE: I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of great matches at the US Open this year, some exciting matches.

MARY PIERCE: What do I expect of my next match? Well, I played her in San Diego. That's not too long ago, a few weeks. She's a difficult player to beat. She's very aggressive. It will be a tough match. It will be a fun match. I'm looking forward to it. I know that I have to be aggressive. We'll see what happens.

MARY PIERCE: When you get in with the top players, there's not really a lot. There's no big difference. There's just a few points here and there that can make a difference in a match. So, you know, Venus has a big serve, big groundstrokes. She might miss a few shots once in a while, but you can't count on that to win a match. So basically it's just going to come down to who takes charge the point first.

MARY PIERCE: I feel like I'm playing well. There's definitely things I can improve on, and that's what I'm trying to do every day is just get better and better, keep going out there, working hard, having fun when I play my matches.