00:03Ben, welcome back to Paris.
00:05How's your preparation been for this year's Roland Garros?
00:08It's been good for me.
00:12I went and played Hamburg last week to get some matches.
00:16And I think to be able to play in the slow, cold conditions
00:22is really good to prepare me for the tournament here.
00:25I feel really confident when it's hot, when the ball is moving fast.
00:28So to be able to feel a little bit more comfortable.
00:32If I play a night match, the temperature drops.
00:35The ball is not moving as much.
00:36So I feel pretty good and always confident at the slams.
00:44Last time I saw you in Munich and you won a car there.
00:48What happens with that car?
00:50Do you get one in the U.S., which is the same car?
00:53Or does this one get shipped over to the U.S.?
00:55What happens with that car?
00:58Yeah, I think a car arrives in the U.S.
01:01I'm certainly not going to keep it in Europe.
01:04No, but it was just wrong if BMW and the U.S.
01:07would give you the same car, but maybe the U.S. or whatever.
01:11Yeah, I'm honestly not sure.
01:12Maybe when I get home in like six months, it'll be there at my doorstep.
01:17But I honestly don't know how it works.
01:21I just want to ask about your season overall.
01:24How are you feeling?
01:25I mean, it's been a couple of titles at 500s.
01:28Thousands haven't been as good for you.
01:29Just what are your sort of overall temperature reading of 2026 so far?
01:33Yeah, it's been super up and down for me.
01:36Honestly, I've been kind of disappointed in my season.
01:40And then I look and I'm six in the race.
01:43But I think that inconsistency has been a big piece for me that I've been trying to iron out and
01:53improve.
01:56It certainly hasn't been an easy year for me on the court, off the court.
02:00But that's one piece moving forward that I'm definitely trying to get better at.
02:08And at the same time, to be able to be finishing out weeks and finishing, you know, when I do
02:13make runs with titles is another one of my big goals.
02:19So on one side, very happy.
02:23And on the other side, you know, there's a lot to improve upon, get better at.
02:28I'm not still not the player that I want to be.
02:32And I have a lot of work to do.
02:34But, you know, winning titles and going deep at slams is my biggest goals for sure.
02:44Hey, Ben.
02:45Sorry about your grandmother.
02:47Thank you.
02:49Just wanted to get you to sort of talk through, I imagine after you won Munich,
02:54you probably got pretty sky-high confidence about where your clay court game was going.
03:00Yeah.
03:01And then, you know, had some, like you said, results that disappointed you.
03:07So you're curious, like, what that was like and do those results, like, affect you?
03:12And how do you still hang on to what happened in Munich and maybe carry that through?
03:19Or is it just, you know, tennis is week by week by week and everything goes as it goes?
03:24Yeah, a little bit of both.
03:26I'm kind of looking at my performances on, you know, the level that I play, not just the result.
03:34Madrid didn't hurt me that much.
03:35I thought I played a good match.
03:36You know, I ended up losing early to Prismich, but Rome and Hamburg, I was a little bit more disappointed.
03:45Rome more with my level, and then Hamburg, you know, I was in the second round, I served for the
03:51match,
03:51which I'm not sure how many times on tour I've served for a match and lost the match.
03:58But better to happen there than here at the slam.
04:02I think it's just one of those sports where you go through certain parts of the year.
04:05You're in a flow state, certain parts of the year that it goes a lot worse.
04:10It's probably still my best clay season to date so far going into Roland Garros.
04:16And I think at the same time, there's certain tournaments that I feel really comfortable on that type of clay.
04:22Munich is one of them.
04:23Still haven't figured out Madrid and Rome, and I know I love playing here.
04:27So I'm definitely, as of right now, an environment player.
04:33There's certain environments that I love playing in that I'm really comfortable in,
04:37and there's certain ones that I'm working to get better at, for sure.
04:42But in terms of where my confidence level is at, it doesn't do that much to me.
04:50In terms of the technical aspects of your clay game and the evolution of it,
04:55what do you feel like you're much better at, and what do you feel like still has got some room
04:59for improvement?
05:00Yeah, I think sometimes I feel like I'm moving at a high level, really elite level on the clay.
05:07Sometimes I'm like, you know, some of these footwork patterns still need work.
05:11I just need to become a better mover on the surface.
05:13I think that, you know, the biggest piece for me is what my identity is on the clay, how I
05:19want to play.
05:21And from surface to surface, that can vary a lot, which makes it difficult,
05:25because something that may work in Munich may not work in Rome,
05:29or something that works really well at Roland Garros may not work in Hamburg.
05:34I think that there's – that's the beauty of clay, and also the difficulty.
05:40Each week you have to be able to adapt and sometimes play a completely different game style based on the
05:47conditions.
05:48And so I think that maybe that's not a technical piece, but it's one of the most important pieces.
05:55Just a couple of weeks away is the World Cup in your home country.
06:00How invested will you be in that World Cup?
06:03And the U.S. team looks really bad.
06:07So what do you think?
06:11Where are you from?
06:12I'm from Austria.
06:14Oh, okay.
06:14We look good.
06:15We look good, I'll tell you that.
06:17I don't know anything about the Austrian football team.
06:21I haven't heard any news.
06:24But obviously always going to back the USA on home soil.
06:29I was thinking that at first you were French, and I would have given you that,
06:33because they're very, very good.
06:36Now I'm like, really, dude?
06:38But I'll probably be more invested in Wimbledon than the World Cup,
06:42but I'll be watching for sure.
06:44Well, U.S. tennis looks good, that's for sure.
06:47I'm curious, as I understand it, you're part of the player boycott, right?
06:52The player protest today.
06:54I'm curious, do you think, like, there's been talk about actual boycotting tournaments.
07:00Do you think that players would be willing to actually, like, if the slams continue not to listen to you,
07:06to make a stand that would hurt them in order to kind of achieve the goals?
07:10Like, for example, I imagine there was an option today to not do press at all, to take a fine.
07:15Like, do you think players would be willing to do that, or is that too much?
07:18No, I mean, from what I've heard, I think that players are probably, especially top players,
07:26are willing to do more than most people think.
07:31You know, the first that kind of really came out and said something strong about it was Arena,
07:36who's obviously a world number one, right?
07:42But I think for us, you know, a lot of the talk is about the prize money,
07:48which was part of our letter, but it's not the only piece of it.
07:52We want to see it at the table, you know.
07:54We want to be able to be heard, respected.
07:59You know, there's other issues, whether it's pension benefits that solely land on the ATP or,
08:09well, I'm blanking right now, bonus pool.
08:13All other things that I think have been considered,
08:17and I think Coco said something about this also,
08:22but we're not just trying to look out for ourselves or line our pockets.
08:28I think that everyone knows how much revenue these tournaments are making,
08:32and sometimes for a player who's 150 in the world or 200 in the world,
08:37this is, you know, the one tournament where they get a big check.
08:41At Challenger, I think maybe if you win the tournament, you get like seven grand,
08:47and adding prize money in a tournament like this four times a year
08:50can really help keep their year in the green instead of the red.
08:55And I think that, you know, the players are playing at such a high level,
08:58and we have so many talented players in the top 200 and even outside
09:03that you should be able to make a living playing the sport being ranked at that place,
09:11and that's not the case right now.
09:13Last question.
09:18It's not as good as the famous Austrian soccer team,
09:21but I'm curious how it feels.
09:23I mean, no one's talked about Austria, really, in this sport,
09:26but how does it...
09:30I didn't say that.
09:31I didn't say that.
09:32The transcript will reflect who said that.
09:35How does it feel to be the U.S. number one for the longest stretch you've held it so far?
09:41And how important is that for you?
09:44Obviously, by the goals, but that's still a meaningful achievement.
09:47Yeah, I think it's a cool thing to think about,
09:51to be able to, you know, sort of carry the flag for our country.
09:59I think that being able to see the growth of American tennis and see the young guys that are coming
10:06through,
10:07and, you know, not the guys who have already made it, but guys that you don't even know their name
10:11yet.
10:12Obviously, I live in Orlando.
10:14The National Center's there, so I'm seeing these young kids all the time that are very good players coming up,
10:2016, 17, practicing with them sometimes.
10:23And for me, that's the coolest part, to kind of be around them and, you know,
10:27give them some exposure to playing with a top-ten guy and to see some of their trajectory
10:34and get to know some of those kids have been really fun.
10:37And so I think I enjoyed that piece of it more because I know when I was a kid
10:44and I got to, you know, hit every once in a while with one of the pros at the USTA,
10:50it was, like, crazy for me.
10:53I was starstruck, and it honestly helped a lot.
10:56So that's more of what I think about when I think about U.S. tennis,
10:59but I'm excited about the place that we're in.
11:03I'm excited to see Taylor Fritz back playing again after being injured for a while,
11:07and I guess I have more of a team view when I think of U.S. tennis,
11:13even though, you know, currently I'm U.S. number one more than the competition.
11:19Are there any of those names of people who may not know yet in Orlando who jump out to you?
11:24Jordan.
11:25Yeah.
11:26Yeah.
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