Taylor Fritz will likely be the top-ranked American (barring an upset of Jannik Sinner by Ben Shelton) after the Australian Open. But the American’s future is hard to predict after that, as a lingering knee issue has clouded the possibilities.
Fritz, who was defeated by Lorenzo Musetti in straight sets on Day 9, remains hopeful that he can simultaneously rehab his knee tendinitis and play through the season. But if we read into his words, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of clarity.
He entered the Australian Open thinking that if things didn’t improve, he may have to shut down his season for a stretch and focus 100 percent on getting the knee right. The knee clearly isn’t right, but the will to push on is still there for Fritz.
“The protocol to fix, the time, you know, there’s very obvious standards for it,” Fritz said of addressing his particular problem.
“How it was feeling when I first got to Australia, I was telling my team and I was saying, ‘Look, if it stays how it is, we are just going to have to stop, because I don’t think it’s getting any better. I can’t play through this.’”
Fritz said that his physio [Wolfgang Oswald, aka “Wolf”] believes he’s on solid footing with the injury, but it doesn’t sound like Fritz feels the same way.
“So I was fully ready to shut it down for a couple of months to get it better, but you know, my physio, who is great and I trust him, he said that he thinks there’s a pretty solid chance that we can do all the rehab protocol and do everything we need to do while I’m still playing. I can rest when I have rests between the tournaments, maybe not play as many tournaments. You know, he thinks that it’s plausible to get it better while playing. So we said let’s try that and see how it goes.”
Fritz says it is still the plan, even though he reported feeling stronger symptons in his knee as the tournament progressed.
“Up until three days ago, I thought it was going pretty well. So I think that’s still the plan moving forward,” he said.
Fritz’s transparency about the issue ahead of the tournament was why many weren’t sanguine about his chances of making a deep run in Australia. He played well to reach the fourth round, but ran out of gas, and also had an oblique injury to deal with.
Going forward, it’s easy to wonder if he’ll be able to replicate the form that made him a Grand Slam finalist and a Top-5 player in the past. At least while the knee continues to be an issue.
“My knee still is improving,” Fritz said. “Like I said in press after my first and second round, it’s going to be a process. It was feeling better. I’m still not 100% sure why I kind of went backwards the last, like, three or four days after two weeks of it, three weeks of it just consistently getting better.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people that have had this, and they say I’ll make a full recovery at some point.”
Fritz says he’ll do his best to take his place in the Dallas Open draw next month.
“I’m hoping I can play Dallas, I think,” he said. “I don’t know why my knee got so much worse kind of in the last, like, three days. Like I said, it was feeling really good through my first two rounds and all the practices before that.
“I don’t know if it’s just the overload of playing, you know, like physical three, four sets, stuff like that. But you know, I have some more time to heal it. I feel like I keep up with the rehab, it’s going to keep getting better. I’m not going to have to play more than three sets any match in Dallas, so kind of just figure it out. If my knee feels like it’s not getting better, if my oblique feels like it’s not getting better, I’ll give myself the time.”
