“We had chances to get the win” – Balaji/Bollipalli after close Davis Cup doubles loss
Doubles duo of Sriram Balaji and Rithvik Bollipalli fought hard, but eventually lost to the Swiss pair of Paul/Stricker 7-6(3) 4-6 5-7 in the 3rd rubber. India eventually won the tie 3-1 in a historic win.
Excerpts from their interview below –
Q) Thoughts on the match
Bollipalli – It was obviously a close match. We had chances to get the win, but yeah, credit to them. I think Jake (Jakub Paul) played really well in important moments and credit to the team, credit to them for coming out and fighting. I think we fought pretty well, but I just couldn’t get it done. Yeah, it’s unfortunate, but hopefully Sumit gets the job done for us.
Q) What was the game plan coming into the match?
Balaji – We had already played them in an ATP 250 in Gstaad and we lost to them in a close super tie break also. So we knew how they play and we had prepared for that. But unfortunately we were in the winning position, like even second set 4 all, we had a break point which they had like this much on the line and they held there.
And then third set also we were a break up, 3-2 serving, didn’t make enough first serves. And on second serves, they made like three return winners, so have to give it to them. So we did our job mostly well just here and there. We couldn’t get the win today.
Q) What were the key moments in the match?
Bollipalli – Yeah, I mean the key moments were to obviously keep holding the serve because it’s indoors and as long as we’re hitting good serves, we were in good positions most of the time. And yeah, I mean end of the day it came down to those close points and like I said credit to them for going after it in those moments. And yeah, it was a very close match.
I think considering how we prepared and all the circumstances we did perform very well. Maybe definitely not our best performance but definitely compete at hard and did whatever best we could considering everything.
