Taylor Fritz has become a Grand Slam finalist and cracked the Top 5 in the last two seasons, proving that he is America’s top dog and a threat to go deep in every tournament he plays.
But the wear and tear of the last three seasons – which included 229 matches, an average of more than 76 a season – has taken a toll on the Southern Californian.
So much, in fact, that Fritz now says the biggest key to unlocking future success on tour will be staying health. No small feat.
“I think over the last four years I feel like I’ve continued to improve a lot as a player and just a much better tennis player,” he told reporters in Perth, where he is competing in United Cup. “I think the one thing that I’ve been noticing now is the body just has to be able to keep up with it.
“It’s a lot of demand kind of playing so many matches that you do when you are a higher-ranked player. There’s no question to me that I’m going to keep improving as a player. I think the biggest thing ahead of me is I have to stay healthy, and my body has to feel strong like it did my first year in the top 10 in order for me to keep pushing it to the demands of the level of tennis that needs to, I guess, be played to keep up with the very top guys.
After his first match, a three-set loss to Argentina’s Sebastian Baez, Fritz admitted that most of his off-season was spent trying to get his knee to peak fitness. That work, however, still isn’t completely done.
“I spent the majority — pretty much the entirety of the off-season trying to rehab my knee tendinopathy, but that’s a thing that takes months and months to get better,” he said.
Fritz also has a lot of rust to knock off after an off-season without much competitive tennis.
“I didn’t get to play a lot of points because I’m trying to not push it too hard,” he said. “So it’s just going to be a struggle of trying to get the reps in and get the points and matches in to start feeling like I’m comfortable while juggling that while still managing my knee pain because I’m going to try to play through and keep doing the rehab while traveling and getting better, but if that doesn’t work in a couple of months, then I am just going to have to full stop and fix it.”
