Taylor Fritz made a winning start to his Japan Open campaign, beating Canada’s Gabriel Diallo 4-6 6-3 7-6 (7-3) in three hard-fought sets in Tokyo.
Fritz now leads 3-0 in his head-to-head matches against Diallo. The US player had won both of his previous head-to-head matches against his Canadian opponent at Wimbledon earlier this year.
Only three points separated the two players. Fritz finished the match with 95 points, Diallo wit 92. Diallo hit 16 more winners than Fritz (40-24).
Fritz had to serve to stay in the match twice in the third set at 4-6 and 5-6 and he was a few points away from losing the match, while he was serving at 4-5 40-30 in the third set, but Fritz held both times. The US player opened up a 3-0 lead in the tie-break. He held his service games and earned another mini-break to seal the win after two hours.
Fritz has won 29 matches since the start of the grass court in June, the most of anyone on the ATP Tour in that time.
Fritz won two matches against Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev in three sets at the Laver Cup in San Francsco helping Team World win over Team Europe. He achieved the first win over a first win against a world number 1.
Fritz has boosted his chances to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals. He is currently sixth in the ATP Race to Turin.
Fritz will take on unseeded Portuguese player Nuno Borges, who came back from one set down to beat wild card Yosuke Watanuki 2-6 6-4 6-1.
Taylor Fritz: “It’s definitely a tough turnaround,” Fritz said. “I think the biggest thing for me today was the energy. It’s really tough to match the energy that you have last week, with Andre Agassi on the bench, the team on the bench, everyone going crazy. I’m obviously a little jet lagged as well, so that comes into it. I really just had to find it and get it going. It was a really atough match to play today.”
