MUBADALA DC OPEN

July 27, 2026

Frances Tiafoe

Press Conference

T. ATMANE/F. Tiafoe

4-6, 6-3, 6-4

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Obviously tough match out there today. You played Terence three times previously. You got the better of him. This time you weren't able to come out on top. Do you feel like it was more so something he did differently in this match, or do you feel like it's more so things that you could have done better to improve on?

FRANCES TIAFOE: My respect to him for winning the match, but very, very poor from my side. I thought I helped him get over the line today, for sure. A lot of mistakes. A lot of easy mistakes, especially on my backhand. Really poor performance in the last two sets from me.

Q. You've talked many times about how badly you want to perform well here. Do you feel like that pressure that you put on yourself to have so much success here gets consuming at times, or do you not really focus on it at all?

FRANCES TIAFOE: I mean, look, I play every year, and I never performed how I have today. I was flat. Just wasn't good enough. You know, give him credit, but I definitely helped him over the line.

Very disappointing. Especially for the year that I've been having, super disappointing. Honestly, that's all I can really say. I had a lot of high hopes. Yeah, this one hurts a lot.

Q. The first set you seemed to take advantage of the short points, capitalizing, winning them early in those rallies. Second and third when he starts getting deep in six-, seven-, eight-shot rallies, that kind of seemed where you struggled to put some away, had some unforced errors. Did it seem like that was an issue out there for you?

FRANCES TIAFOE: I just felt off, making a lot of mistakes. Especially we he played high balls out of my range, I was missing a lot. Especially on my backhands, missed a lot of balls, backhands in the net, and long.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't find anything he did really different. Maybe moved his serve around a little bit more than he had in the other matches we played. Yeah, I mean, just poor from me. Really, really poor.

Q. In a lot of the practices that I've seen you put a lot of emphasis on serving. So tonight in tonight's match how did that kind of correlate out there in certain moments? How did that be an advantage to you in certain moments, but then also, what aspects of that part of your game are you looking to improve in?

FRANCES TIAFOE: The whole thing. I mean, I think if I serve well, I play well. Super patchy today. Served pretty well at the end of the first, and after that it was really patchy. Had a lot of looks at seconds. And where he took cuts and he played the right way on those points.

Yeah, I didn't serve well. I didn't serve great today. Not horrible, horrible, but not anywhere near where it needs to be.