Ryan Harrison - 15.1.2013

TENNIS - Australian Open 2013. Djokovic d. HARRISON 61 62 63

Q.  Just too good tonight?
RYAN HARRISON:  Yeah, he played really well.  Kind of getting broke in that first service game, giving a guy that's that good a little bit of a lead and letting him front run is just not the ideal way to start.  I guess your first service game you want to at least stay in it.  From then on out, he just had his foot on the gas pedal.
It was tough because his balls were landing so hard and deep.  Whenever your game plan is to try and take control of a guy and you're not getting balls to hit, you know, if I try to lace balls from six, eight feet behind the baseline I just look stupid and crazy.
So it's just something where I know that level now.  I've played him three times now.  I played some of the best guys in the world.  I'm not there yet.  I know how to get there.  I just got to keep working at it.

Q.  How is the court playing?
RYAN HARRISON:  It's a little faster than I remember last year.  Kind of shoots off the court a little bit.
I mean, it's a good court.  I like playing on a surface like that.  It's just, you know, he's going to be tough for anybody in this tournament.

Q.  Is this a tough loss or is it easy?
RYAN HARRISON:  It's one where you're disappointed because obviously leading up the last day and a half, two days, I'm all excited because I'm wanting to make a statement, wanting to win this match, wanting to step up.
But, I mean, even if I somehow was able to win this match, with the way he played tonight, I've still have so far to go before I can play that level consistently.
For me, it's just exciting because I don't look at it as unfortunate to play these guys early.  I've been fortunate enough to play in the last eight, nine slams against top guys in every round.
Hopefully in two, three years, whenever I am one of the top guys, I'm not going to be caught off guard by anything because I've seen this level and I know what to expect from these guys.  I've just got to keep working and get there.  That's the bottom line.

Q.  Do you see this as a good gauge to where your game is or more he came out blazing today?
RYAN HARRISON:  It's tricky because my goal for this year is to be a lot more assertive, a lot more aggressive.  But like I talked about before, how are you going to take control of a guy whenever he's putting the ball a foot from the baseline and absolutely tagging it.
At that point I'm going to have to get better at kind of what he does so well, which is like absorb and then send back.  He doesn't just hit really hard and hit really good when he was on the offense.  He takes deep, hard balls and then sends them back hard and deep.
Any time I had a chance to attack a forehand or hit it, it came back at the exact same speed.  That's what I have to get better at.  I have to get better at being able to go side to side with those guys.
I'm never going to be like Nadal where I play 10, 12 feet behind the baseline and hit it up and heavy like that.  I mean, I'm just not going to be able to do that.
My focus and my goal is to get to where I can play near the baseline, like he does.  He's going to be an extremely good person for me to emulate as far as how I want to play my baseline points, because he stands on the baseline and he doesn't give any ground.

Q.  Do you think it takes some draws that give you more of a head start into the tournament?  You hit a bunch of walls early here.
RYAN HARRISON:  I'm not concerned about the draws at all.  It doesn't matter to me the draws or things that you can't control.  Like I said before, my goal is to win these tournaments one day.
I'm not concerned about losing second, third, or fourth round.  I want to get to the point where I'm good enough to win these tournaments eventually.
And playing these guys and having the opportunity to play everybody  I've played on every stadium except for Ashe at this point, which is pretty exciting for me to know that moving forward in my career that I'm not going to have anything that I haven't seen before.

Q.  Did you get a chance to see what happened to Brian today?
RYAN HARRISON:  I saw that, yeah.  I mean, I heard.  Was it a torn meniscus and locked leg?

Q.  Three to four months out.
RYAN HARRISON:  It's sad.  Brian is a great guy.  Ever since he's been back in the locker room, I've enjoyed talking to him, talking tennis with him.  It's really unfortunate.  I wish him the best and a speedy recovery because he certainly deserves the opportunity as much as anyone, if not more.