Taylor Fritz is under no illusions. After beating fellow American Frances Tiafoe in five sets in the US Open semifinals on Friday night, Fritz became the first American player in 18 years to reach the final of his country’s crown jewel tennis tournament – a pretty incredible run. Fritz knows his next test, Sunday’s final against the world’s top-ranked player, Italian Jannik Sinner, will be incredibly difficult.
But Fritz, who is also the first American to reach the final any The biggest tournament in 15 years, Fritz draws his confidence from two factors. First, the hardest part is over. “I think today was much harder than the final for me,” Fritz said after his 4-6, 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 victory over Tiafoe. Fritz had a 6-1 lead over Tiafoe, a close friend, in the semifinals, so he felt pressure to win the match and his desire to be the American player who makes history threatened to overwhelm him, especially after he lost the first set despite leading 3-0.
“That was really hard for me mentally, I had to digest it somehow,” said Fritz. “I just gave away the set because of my mistakes and my nervousness.”
However, Fritz recovered and won the second set. And when the fourth set was tied at 3-3, he won a 31-stroke rally that gave him renewed momentum. After the match, a devastated Tiafoe said that shortly after that marathon point, his body started to cramp – due to nerves, he believes. Fritz handled the rest of the match effortlessly.
Second, Fritz believes he is Sinner’s equal. They have already faced each other twice, on the hard courts of Indian Wells: Sinner won the last meeting in 2023, while Fritz beat Sinner in straight sets in 2021. “I’ve always played well against Jannik,” Fritz said. “He’s a very strong ball-striking player, but I feel like I always hit the ball really well from his ball.”
“I have the feeling,” said Fritz, “that I will play really well and win.”
It’s only fitting that Fritz has been given the chance to be the first American to actually win a U.S. Open since Andy Roddick did it 21 years ago in 2003. While Tiafoe was the crowd favorite at a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday night – Tiafoe had already reached the semifinals two years ago, losing to Carlos Alcaraz in a thrilling match, and is playing more for the fans than his less important opponent – Fritz entered the tournament as the top-ranked American. He broke through two years ago when he won Indian Wells, perhaps the most prestigious global tournament outside the majors on tour, and this season he became the first U.S. player since Andre Agassi in 2003 to reach the second week of all four majors. When ESPN cited that statistic, Fritz, a lanky 6-foot-5 Southern Californian who is the son of former top-10 professional player Kathy May Fritz and respected coach Guy Frtiz, jokingly jibed at the network on X (formerly Twitter). “I love the shoutout from @espn but you follow my girlfriend and not me on Insta so we have a fight,” Fritz wrote. His girlfriend, influencer Morgan Riddle, has 372,000 followers on Instagram and over 542,000 on TikTok.
“Strong serve,” Sinner said of Fritz on Friday after he himself defeated Briton Jack Draper in the semifinals. “A very solid player from the back of the court. He can hit hard. He can hit with rotation. He can shake up the game very well.”
So did Sinner himself, who beat Draper in straight sets, 7-5, 7-6 (3), 6-2. (Draper vomited three times during the match; he attributed his nausea to a combination of damp conditions and anxiety.) Sinner, who won the other major hard-court tournament, the Australian Open, earlier this year, entered the tournament under the shadow of a doping controversy. He talked around the subject when asked after his victory how he had managed his off-court problem. “I’m just trying to find confidence as the days go by,” Sinner said.
The doping imbroglio, however, was not to detract from Sinner’s success in New York. In March, he was twice found to have traces of a banned steroid. He denied intentionally taking the substance; a tennis integrity inquiry concluded that Sinner’s explanation was “credible” and a court concluded that the amount of steroids he had taken was so small that it would have had “no … performance-enhancing effect on the player.”
In addition, the two positive tests occurred in March. Not in January, during his victory at the Australian Open. And not in September. Sinner is close to ending the year with Grand Slam victories, an achievement that clearly puts him on the defensive against Alcaraz after Nadal and Djokovic.
To counterbalance what will surely be a pro-Fritz crowd on Sunday, Sinner will be looking across the Atlantic and also the Mediterranean. “I know a lot of people are watching from home in Italy,” he said. “It’s just about getting some support from them.”
Fritz, meanwhile, became emotional during his on-court interview with another American player, Chris Eubanks, who has been working for ESPN since his first-round loss at the US Open last week. Eubanks reminded Fritz that he is the first American to reach the US Open final in 18 years (Roger Federer beat Roddick in four sets in 2006). His voice began to choke. “I’m a more emotional person when I’m happy,” Fritz said afterward. “I cry at happy endings in movies, not at sad things.”
And no matter what the results on Sunday, Fritz feels it’s a feel-good time for American tennis. Tiafoe has promised to be back and compete. Ben Shelton, a semifinalist at the US Open a year ago, is only 21. Tommy Paul, number 14 in the world rankings, won the Olympic bronze medal in doubles with Fritz in Paris, reached the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2023 and made the semifinals of Indian Wells this year.
“We’re on the verge of winning a Grand Slam tournament,” Fritz said. “We have this generation, this group of guys, four or five of whom are actually at this level. I mean, it shows that we’re all moving in the right direction. I think when one of us does something, the others follow. The others get confidence from that.”
“Yes, I think this is just the beginning for all of us,” he concluded.
