US OPEN

September 6, 1998

Jan Michael Gambill

Q. Do you feel like you missed a serious opportunity here or do you feel like you just went five with the French Open champion?

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: Definitely missed a serious opportunity. I mean, I gave him the match basically. I mean, he should never have broken me after I'm up 40-15 on my own serve in the fifth set. He didn't do anything special.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: I went for it. It was just long. I went for the serve. My toss obviously wasn't in the right place. It definitely put me in a hole, a huge hole. I didn't get out of it.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: I felt like -- I was starting to cramp a little bit. It was just enough that I wanted to make sure that I did everything I could to stop it from happening, if I could.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: Not really. Actually, I'm happy with my mind set at least. I just missed some balls. I set the points up pretty well, and didn't execute the shots when I needed to, you know, on a couple of opportunities, missing some shots long, going for a big forehand and missing it long, which in the future won't happen. I'll make those balls. But today, it just didn't happen for me.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: That goes without saying. Moya is one of the toughest competitors on the Tour. I don't have to give him credit; he has earned that credit. Yeah, he's a damn tough competitor. But, you know, with all said and done, I think I made some errors on the crucial points.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: It was a great atmosphere. I mean, it was really fun to play out there. I had a great time. But I think I take away, you know, everything -- I learn a little bit from every one of these matches. My serve really wasn't on the whole day, but I was able to stay in the match and play tough. Over time, I started playing better and better. Groundstroke-wise, I wasn't hitting very well in the first set, missing too many shots. I learned a little bit. So hopefully I'll take away some of that stuff.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: Yeah, of course.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: You know, I think that you can -- he is a pretty good volleyer, but at the net he's a pretty lob-able guy. He closes real hard. I just seized the opportunity on that point. I lobbed pretty well most of the day, I think.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: That's just bad luck. You can't do anything about that. You can get mad about it, but that's about it. It was a good shot.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: Definitely not "despicable". I really fought hard; I gave it a lot of heart out there. I tried until the end. I would never call it despicable. I think there's an enormous amount of room to improve on certain things, shot selection, those kinds of things, but I definitely played a better match on the whole today. I wouldn't even compare it to the French Open match there.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: Not really. It's kind of funny. I should have been. Maybe I would have played a little bit smarter on that second serve. Just went for the shots. Even on that last ball, I was going for my shots. I saved myself a couple times in the previous games on my serve. But, you know, I hit the ball pretty hard, but I missed some shots. Didn't work for me in the tiebreaker. He played a good tiebreaker.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: It's definitely not the end of the world. A loss is never the end of the world to me. I'm going to learn from this. He's No. 10 in the world. He's a great player. You can look at it two -- I did play a pretty good match against him, had a lot of chances. Should have served it out or at least given myself a chance to serve it out. But nothing bad is going to come from this.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: I spoke with Gullikson.

JAN-MICHAEL GAMBILL: I would hope so. We'll see what happens, you know, Gully and I have been talking. I can't really say. But they'll make an announcement.

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