Quentin Halys, qualified for the 2nd round at Wimbledon: “I did the job very well”

“After winning your three qualifying matches, you passed the first round without trembling against Chris Eubanks (6-4, 6-4, 6-2), quarter-finalist last year. How do you analyze this performance?
I was already super happy to have qualified. Today (Wednesday), it was great to be back here in this mythical place. There was a good match, a bit special with this rainy day to start. It was really cool to be there, I had a good time. I played a very good match. I served very well, I returned well. Everything worked well.

I had the feeling that he wasn’t at his best either. For my part, I really did a very good job. It’s super satisfying. This is the temple, it’s really great, a special atmosphere, this enthusiasm, lots of people on the small courts. Once you’re here, you always want a little more. I gave myself the means to get through this first round.

You had a huge success at the net (24/27). Was that one of the keys to the match?
Tactically, with him returning a lot of steals, it was something we had put in full to try to come to the net a lot and to do a lot of serve-volleys. I have a fairly aggressive game where I come to the net a lot so when I have a good success percentage, it helps and it wins matches. We have to continue in this way. Today’s match should give me even more confidence to go to the net even more later.

“Trying to ‘lose’ matches in the right way, rather than like in the last round of Roland Garros qualifying where at one point I tried to make my opponent make a mistake”

You were very close to your line on the way back. Why this choice?
This is the position that suits me well at the moment here. Yesterday (Tuesday), I watched Giovanni’s (Mpetshi) match. We could see that Korda was not very effective by being quite far away on the return. He opens up the angles quite a bit. Same with Daniil (Medvedev) who had trouble against Alex (Müller). I feel quite comfortable closer. Against a server like Eubanks, I try to block the angles. It allows me to return quite quickly when I block. I feel good like that. You have to stay adaptable. The grass seems slower to me than last year. In any case, my intention is to be quite aggressive.”

You have had a new coach for a few weeks, Olivier Malcor. What are you working on?
We’re starting a new cycle with Olivier. It’s the beginning so it’s important to take stock, know where we want to go and how. What we’ve defined is to be even more aggressive than in the past. Accept, like Giovanni, to make quite a few mistakes sometimes, but that puts a lot of pressure on surfaces like here. Try to lose matches in the right way, rather than like in the last qualifying round at Roland Garros where at one point I tried to make my opponent make a mistake. Today, I feel like I provoked a lot more. If the mistake happens, so much the better, otherwise it’s up to me to go get the point.”