BILLIE JEAN KING CUP: JAPAN VS GREAT BRITAIN

September 18, 2025

Ai Sugiyama

Moyuka Uchijima

Team Japan

Quarter-Final Press Conference

K. BOULTER/M. Uchijima

6-2, 6-1

Team Great Britain - 2

Team Japan - 0

THE MODERATOR: Not the result you wanted today, Ai, but could you summarize the week you've had here and the tie today.

CAPTAIN AI SUGIYAMA: Yeah, was a tough battle for us. Obviously Great Britain played really well. But, yeah, we're happy to be here. Well, we're going to try again next year.

THE MODERATOR: Moyuka, how was your experience playing out there?

MOYUKA UCHIJIMA: Yeah, we was really happy to be back in the Final for the second year. Today unfortunately wasn't our day. Yeah, I wish I could perform a little bit better.

I think I had learned another lesson. I'm just going to use this experience to come back stronger next year (tearing up).

Q. Ai, it was a tough day for Japan. Your thoughts on the tie?

CAPTAIN AI SUGIYAMA: Yeah, I mean, I knew that Great Britain is going to be a tough opponent. Yeah, Moyuka fought really hard. Yeah, today wasn't our day. I mean, Kartal and Boulter played really well, high level of tennis. I really like to congratulate them.

Overall it was good to be here because it's the top eight, best eight. Being the quarterfinals two years in a row was not too bad for us. Next year try to work on certain things that today's match we know what we have to do to be better. We work on it and try to be better place.

Q. It has been a great achievement by Japan to reach this stage for two years running. You have Naomi Osaka playing well again. Talk about your thoughts for Japanese tennis going forward and particularly in this competition.

CAPTAIN AI SUGIYAMA: Yeah, unfortunately Naomi wasn't here. She's playing really good tennis again. Yeah, unfortunately she got injured right before coming here. US Open semis, Montreal run-up. She's doing really good. So hopefully she can play for Team Japan again.

Also young ones is playing better now. Wakana Sonobe, she won the Grand Slam juniors. She's now 200 something. She's also upcoming player.

We're working on really to be better team. As a team we have a really great spirit like from young ones, the players who has experience. I'm so happy to work with these girls. They're so nice.

Hopefully we going to be stronger coming back next year.