UNITED CUP

January 2, 2024

David Witt

Taylor Fritz

Jessica Pegula

Rajeev Ram

Team USA

Press Conference

HUNTER-EBDEN/Pegula-Ram

6-3, 6-1

Team USA - 1

Team Australia - 2

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Tough luck today, Team. First, Taylor and Jess, can you just talk through your singles matches, just what you think you did well, what was the difference, and how you feel with the two matches you both played going into the next few weeks?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I thought I played all right. There's a lot of points I could have played better, but then there's a lot of points that I lost where I thought I couldn't play any better and I wouldn't do anything different in those points, and I still lost them. It's tough to have matches like that.

Demon played the best I've ever seen him play, and definitely the best he's played against me in our, I think this was our eighth match against each other. You know, the things I did to win the previous matches, they just weren't working. He was playing great defense, he wasn't bothered by my pace, he was serving really well. It was tough. It was a lot of the match I felt like was just almost unplayable.

Q. And, Jess, on your match.

JESSICA PEGULA: Yeah, Ajla played some really high-level tennis. I felt like I played a much cleaner second set, so that was nice to finish on a cleaner note there. Yeah, it was a good match. It was a tough match again.

Both my matches have been long games, long rallies, really physical. I'm glad I got those two good matches in and started the year with a win. That's always nice.

Yeah, she played great. It was a tough match. I had to figure things out, you know, try to find my game a bit. I thought it was much better in the second. She definitely had her chances and pushed me. I'm glad I was able to keep it in straight sets today, you know, and fight back against a lot of different momentum swings throughout the match. I think mentally it was also a good test for me.

Q. You're in Adelaide, right?

JESSICA PEGULA: Yeah, I don't think I'm going to play. We'll see.

Q. In terms of what you are happy with in terms of where your level is after these two matches? And what, you feel like you need to hit the practice courts, match courts, practice matches? What do you think?

JESSICA PEGULA: To be honest, I don't feel great. I feel like I'm not really great form right now, but I'm still finding ways, I still had chances the first match. I played well today. I think my ball-striking is still good. It's just cleaning up some errors with, like, loose points. When I have leads, when I'm up in games, second-serve returns, stuff like that I think is what frustrated me the last couple matches because I feel like I was just giving away too many free points, which, you know, when you get in a good groove and you're not doing that, it gets frustrating when you're making mistakes and all that.

But like I said, it felt much better the second set. I thought that was much cleaner for me. Hopefully I can just kind of build off that momentum going into AO and, you know, get some really good practice, get out there in the heat and train a bit.

But, I mean, I feel pretty good. I love the conditions here. I think I can always play well here.

Q. Rajeev, what made Matt and Storm so difficult tonight? What do you think was the difference there?

RAJEEV RAM: I mean, I think obviously they are good players, to start with. I think Storm is No. 1 in the world right now, so that's pretty good, last time I checked. Matt obviously has been playing well.

I think we had a bunch of chances that we could have made it pretty close in the first set. I think, yeah, the first three games or at least two of the first three games went to deuce. We lost, I felt like, every deuce point.

Yeah, it's tough. Didn't execute very well, and, you know, they just, you know, played big points better than us. It seemed to kind of snowball.