This year’s US Open finalist Taylor Fritz beat David Goffin 6-3 6-3 in their first head-to-head match to reach the fifth Masters 1000 semifinal of his career at the Shanghai Masters 1000 tournament.
Before today Fritz won the 2022 Indian Wells title in 2022 and advanced to three more semifinals in Monte-Carlo in 2023 and in Madrid in 2024. Last May he lost to Andrey Rublev in the semifinal of the Madrid Mutua Open.
Fritz has advanced to his third hard-court Masters 1000 semifinal and his first since he won his only title in this category at Indian Wells in 2022.
Fritz has become just the second US player to reach the semifinal in Shanghai after Sebastian Korda in 2023 and the eighth American player to reach five Masters 1000 since this level of tournament started in 1990 following André Agassi, Pete Sampras, Andy Roddick, Michael Chang, Jim Courier, John Isner and Mardy Fish.
Fritz improved his win-loss record to 49-19 this season. The US player converted three of the seven break points he earned and won 70% of his second serve points. The US player has boosted his chance of qualifying for the ATP Finals for the second time in his career. He is currently fifth in the ATP Live to Turin, but he move ahead of Danil Medvedev into fourth place if he wins in Shanghai.
Fritz and Goffin split 1-1 in both of their previous head-to-head matches. These matches went to the decisive third set.
Fritz raced out to a 3-0 lead with an early break, but Goffin pulled the break back to catch up to 2-3. Fritz earned the second break in the sixth game to open up a 4-2 lead and served out the first set 6-3.
The second set started with two holds before Fritz broke serve in the third game to take a 2-1 lead. Both players traded holds in the next games. Goffin saved three match points in the ninth game as he was serving to stay in the match. Fritz served out the win on his fourth match point after 1 hour and 21 minutes.
Djokovic will face either Novak Djokovic or Jakub Mensik.
“I feel like sometimes it takes a couple of matches to find my routines, to find what feels good and what is working for me. I feel like once I get past the first two rounds, I feel very locked in. I have come this far already, so I might as well really dial it in and I am enjoying being here. I think that I have been working well, especially in the match against Holger Rune. I knew I had to. I knew serves that might work well against somebody else might not necessarily work against Goffin. The only thing I remembered about playing against him is that he is an incredible returner, and serves I am not used to seeing come back, they come back. So I had to be on it with my serve and extra aggressive with second serves”, said Fritz.
