"Anything but straightforward" - Zverev on close battle with Khachanov despite straight sets win

Straight set win but anything but straightforward in a way. We played incredibly well, fought incredibly well, second and third set I think it's more than obvious that they could have gone both ways and I just played a few points better here and there. I'm happy with the win. I feel like when I've made the final here in 2020 I didn't play well but I didn't play well the entire tournament. That never changed, funny enough. And I made it to the final and I was two points away from winning. But I think the improvement has been quite dramatic for me and it's a great thing because I really started off the tournament and I was like well this is pointless because I'm not going to do anything here and here I am sitting and preparing for a Sunday final. So things like that can happen in sports and tennis in general. Things can change very quickly for the positive or negative and for me luckily it was for the positive. And now I'm going to do everything I can to prepare for Sunday. Frans is somebody that can do anything with a tennis ball. He can be aggressive, he can also mess around with it a little bit. He can be tricky to play for sure. I have massive respect for him also. I've known him for almost 20 years now. Similar to Clarenz actually. And Ben. Ben is just a big powerful guy. Massive serve, massive ground strokes. Everything he does is just big. They're a bit of a different style of tennis player but they're both very exciting. It's not like in the sun where the ball bounces even higher or even faster. It helps a little bit but for me it's more about the time, getting up and that was the biggest challenge. But I'm happy that I have that behind me now. I believe in the work that we've done. Sometimes it's just so easy. I don't think about it like that. I just understood in the dressing room that I was one serve away from playing in all four Grand Slam Finals. That's a bit bitter but otherwise it's pretty okay. But of course on Sunday it's a huge match and that's what I'm focusing on now. I chose to play the way I chose to play. I trusted my shots. I trusted my decisions. Maybe I rushed a little bit in some situations. But at the same time I'm playing against an opponent on the other side so it's not like I'm playing just everything depends on me. Then it would be pretty easy if every time it only depends on me. He let me play. He was kind of pushing the ball in the last few rallies. I felt it, yes. I could have stayed in the point longer. I could. But I chose the balls that I felt comfortable to take a risk. Not risk, let's say to play aggressive. That's it. I made some mistakes but I made some beautiful points as well. He won three more points in my entire match. That's what I saw afterwards. What to say? He won the important ones.