THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

June 28, 2022

Taylor Fritz

Press Conference

T. FRITZ/L. Musetti

6-4, 6-4, 6-3

THE MODERATOR: Are you happy to show the form you were showing in Eastbourne last week?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I mean, it could have been a potentially dangerous match, and aside from kind of going down a break in the first, outside of that, I just played a really solid match.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Can I just ask you about Max's game? He's just won. Big serve like you have. He chases his into the net. Curious what you thought that's like to play against and do you give thoughts about chasing it into the court after your serve?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I think he has a really good understanding of his game and what he's good at, what he's not good at, and kind of how he has to play if he wants to be able to beat guys and on the right surface, a fast court or a grass court.

It's just really tough to play tennis against a guy who is serving basically two first serves and not double faulting much and come in behind it and volleying really well.

It's not really my thing, because I trust my ground strokes a lot more than I do my volleys.

But for him it works really well, and he kind of, like I said, he knows his strengths and knows his weaknesses. He kind of commits to playing that type of way. He's really dangerous.

Q. Something that Reilly said a few hours ago, he said he thought the grass plays very slow now.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah.

Q. He didn't feel like it's a server's surface anymore. That's a big weapon, obviously.

TAYLOR FRITZ: I don't think it's necessarily ever really been -- it's not really a server's surface because, like, a server, is going to hold serve on any surface; hard court, clay court, whatever. Reilly, John, those guys, they are going to hold serve on like any surface.

So if anything, it helps the guys that don't serve as well. Now it's tougher, it's tougher for all the guys that are servers to break those people, I would say.

It's good for people that want to like serve and volley, I guess, because you can get to the net. It helps your volleys a lot, stays a bit lower.

But the grass, it's pretty slow, I'd say, for sure.

Q. You're having a really good year. Anything in particular you have sort of changed in the past sort of eight to ten months that's helping you? Why is it all suddenly really clicking?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, what's really been clicking for me kind of since the end of last year when I started playing a lot better is my forehand has been a much bigger weapon, I have been able to trust it under pressure more than I used to.

So I have just gotten this shot that I hurt people more with. Yeah, it's just become a big weapon for me. And then since that it's been clicking. I have a lot more confidence throughout my whole entire game. As of recently I feel like my serve's really started clicking again.

So it's kind of all these things coming together.

Q. You were practicing, if I have it right, for the Indian Wells final and then all hell breaks loose. Can you give us a little medical history starting with that and what you have been through medically since then.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah. So that, it actually happened in the semifinal match against Rublev was where the injury happened. It happened kind of late in the game, late in the 4-All game, I believe, or 5-All game, whatever it was, the game I was serving before the last game.

It happened, I was kind of feeling it out, wasn't sure what was going on with it. And then when Rublev served the next game, I felt like this crazy pain like pushing off.

Luckily I was able to like somehow break that game. And then we worked on it, did a lot of treatment, everything. It was a weird pain, so I actually half expected to wake up the next morning and it was just okay.

Didn't feel great, but I didn't really do any lateral moving until I got on the court. I just kind of jogged and biked. It was okay. Didn't feel great. But the second I kind of made like a push-off step in the warmup, it was just like the worst pain.

So I really didn't think I was going to be able to play. Definitely didn't think I was going to be able to play.

Luckily they were able to give me some like shots of lidocaine to numb it, and literally I couldn't even feel my foot for the final. So that was good.

And then a day or two later, the initial, the pain I was getting, went away. I got an MRI and it didn't show any stress fracture or anything like that. We were worried about what we think it was. I pinched it really hard in the semifinal on a movement and it got so inflamed that it was just kind of like the muscles and the nerves or whatever was being pinched. So it was giving me that really sharp pain that I was feeling.

Once the inflammation went down two or three days later it wasn't too bad.

Through Miami I played, wasn't too bad. I just felt like my ankle would click when I served, but it was fine.

Then leaving Monte-Carlo, my left foot started hurting a little bit, and I went home, trained for two weeks. Then I went to Madrid, but my left foot was hurting the whole time. I got a scan when I got to Madrid, it showed prestress fracture on my fourth metatarsal, my left foot.

Even though I felt like it didn't hurt that bad when I played, only hurt a little bit, all the doctors said that I needed to shut it down or else it would lead to a stress fracture and then I'd be out for months.

So, you know, we shut it down for three weeks. I was in a boot. Then I came to French Open in the boot and, because I figured I was going to be back for grass season anyway so I might as well play French Open, and I did, and was not playing good tennis obviously. Hadn't done anything. I was in a boot for a couple of weeks. There was that. But I gave it the time to heal, and it healed.

Then right before Queen's, for some reason, my knee just got -- my kneecap, right kneecap just got absolutely lit up. I think it was just from a lot of load on grass courts where you're staying really low and putting your knees and quads under a lot of extra stress.

Then I'm doing that after not -- being in the boot. I think it was partially a compensation thing. What we think it was was just really bad tendinitis, and we just -- I was really lucky to kind of get over, like, just kind of get rid of that in five or six days. I played my first match in Eastbourne, and after that, I feel like all of the tendinitis, like the tightness I was feeling, was gone.

But it was really bad in Queen's. I probably shouldn't have played my first round in Queen's, to be honest. That's it.

Q. So you can relate to Rafa when he said he played numb at Roland Garros.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah. If that's what he did, yeah.

Q. You said left foot, right knee?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Left foot was in the boot, and then right knee had the tendinitis, yeah.

Q. I spoke to Reilly and Tommy Paul at Eastbourne, because obviously you're good friends with them.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah.

Q. About the relationship between the three of you. Can you just talk a little bit just very briefly about when you first sort of met them, first memory of meeting them and how your relationships evolved to this point.

TAYLOR FRITZ: It's really funny actually. The first time Tommy and I -- we didn't know each other. They played each other in a national tournament, and I guess, these guys were way better than me at the time. I guess these guys had like a competition, maybe Frances or someone else, they went on to play at the same time, they had a competition who could finish faster.

He wasn't even taking the match seriously with me. Let's see who can beat the idiots. We play faster (smiling).

That's the first time I actually met them was when I went to USTA when I was like 14 or 15 years old and we lived together in the dorms in Boca, and that was rough.

So I feel like that really brings people together, because there is absolutely nothing to do. We all just were kind of hanging out, killing time together. We just have become really good friends since then. We have been through all that, and it's crazy to think you grew up with a lot of people playing tennis, and not many of them end up actually making it professionally and we all kind of were able to come up and be on tour together.

It's really cool.