BILLIE JEAN KING CUP

April 13, 2023

Marion Maruska

Sinja Kraus

Tamira Paszek

Team Austria

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Captain Maruska, could you start.

CAPTAIN MARUSKA: Welcome everybody to the press conference. We arrived Saturday, had some breakfast on Sunday. Yeah, we're looking forward to the tie now.

Q. Captain, you obviously worked very hard over the years in the group stages to be able to get here. What does it mean for you as a team to be able to have this opportunity now to play at this level of the Billie Jean King Cup?

CAPTAIN MARUSKA: It's a great opportunity for everybody. I mean, all the players. It's very tough to play in our zone, so many matches, so many countries in one week. They're very good countries and very tough players there. It was a great effort, what the whole team did to come to this stage.

Q. You were a member of the team in 2002 that beat the U.S. Do you have any memories of that?

CAPTAIN MARUSKA: For sure, I have a lot of memories, of course. We were the complete underdogs. Some of our players couldn't play in that week. We were complete underdogs. Only played against the top-10 players.

We had the whole week we were talking about first for fun, then it came true, especially after the first day when we were up 2-Love.

Yeah, I mean, I have great memories, of course, because it was a big surprise. The Austrians, the press, nobody came because everybody thought we were going to lose anyway. Afterwards it was a big surprise when we came back, so yeah.

Q. Julia and Sinja, as the singles players, you're going to play against two players in WTA top 10. I know neither of you have played either Coco or Jess before. What are you going to do to prepare and try and play your best game in these matches?

JULIA GRABHER: Yeah, I think for sure we are the underdogs here. But we are excited to play for our country and we will give our best and try to win, yeah.

Q. Sinja, any thoughts?

SINJA KRAUS: I think we're going to try to focus on ourselves, try our best, have fun on the court. As a team, we're a great team, having each other's backs.

I think it's going to be a great experience for all of us.

Q. Julia, you had a good week in Charleston last week on clay. Now on hard courts. What's the adjustment like when you play so close together on two different surfaces?

JULIA GRABHER: Yeah, I think it's for sure a change, but everybody had to change. I think Jess also played there. It's going to be different, but we are here now for a few days and we prepared on hard courts, so I'm ready.

Q. Barbara and Tamira, have you had time to do anything fun? Anything fun planned or any kind of team activities or?

TAMIRA PASZEK: Well, we've been for morning runs. We had a couple rounds of UNO. We enjoyed some really good food at dinner. We just really, really happy to be here in Delray Beach in such a beautiful place. We're excited for the tie.