Taylor Fritz sees the upcoming clay swing as a golden opportunity where he could collect a series of valuable points after crashing out of Indian Wells.
Fourth-seeded Fritz, who was the defending champion at the Masters 1000 event, was beaten 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, by Italy’s Jannik Sinner in the quarter-finals on Thursday. The loss means that he will exit the world’s top five on Monday and is set to drop down to 10th in the world. He is currently more than 1100 points ahead of 11th-place Sinner who could considerably reduce the gap if he were to go on and win the Indian Wells title.
It was only last month that Fritz became the highest-ranked American man since Mardy Fish in 2009 after rising to a career-high of No.5. Now he faces a fight to remain among the world’s elite in the standings. A situation that comes as no surprise to him given the current depth of men’s tennis.
“I think that my level is a consistent level of that of a top-10 player, but there’s like 15 guys that I also think should be in the top 10. So it’s a fight between a lot of us for the spots,” Fritz told reporters on Thursday.
“It’s not a bad sign if I drop my points here and I’m still in the top 10. That means I must have been doing something right the rest of the year. Hopefully, I can kind of keep it going.”
The next challenge for the 25-year-old will be the Miami Masters where he will be aiming to improve on his run to the fourth round of the tournament 12 months ago. After that, he will embark upon the European clay swing which is perhaps his best chance of the season to add to his points tally. In 2022 Fritz played in Monte Carlo before missing over a month of the Tour due to a foot injury. He did manage to play at the French Open but lost in the second round to Spain’s Bernabe Zapata Miralles.
“We’ll see how I handle the clay court season this year. I think last year I didn’t really get a chance to see. I felt like I started strong, quarterfinals Monte-Carlo, and then I had a stress fracture in my foot and I was out the whole clay court season (except Roland Garros),” he explained.
“I think hopefully using a decent seeding at tournaments, getting slightly better draws, I can produce some good clay court results.”
So far this season, Fritz has achieved a win-loss record of 17-5 on the Tour with him winning one title at the Delray Beach Open. However, only four out of those 17 wins were against players ranked in the top 20.
“One thing that I’ve done really well the last year and a half is that I think I’m four for five on winning the tournament when I make it to the semifinals,” Fritz points out.
“That’s the biggest difference in why I was able to get my ranking to where I got my ranking. If I don’t win those matches, then I don’t think I even break the top 15.”
Fritz has won five ATP trophies and more than $11M in prize money so far in his career.
