NITTO ATP FINALS

November 19, 2022

Taylor Fritz

Pala Alpitour, Torino

Press Conference

N. DJOKOVIC/T. Fritz

7-6, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. How do you look at this whole week? In my opinion, you just took your chance of Alcaraz's withdrawal.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I mean, now is probably not the best time for me to give a good answer for the reflection of the week because I'm extremely upset about the match, more so about the things that happen in a match that I can't control.

But I'm sure in two weeks from now I'll look back and I'll say, yeah, like it was a really great week. Not only did I get the chance to play the World Tour Finals, I made it out of the group, had two good wins.

I said maybe after my first-round match, first match with Rafa, I could have ended my year with a second-round loss in Paris, and that would have been it. I would have gone into the off-season with that being the last match.

Now I'm going to feel a lot better about my tennis, about my game being done for the season off of this performance. So it's great.

At this exact moment in time, I'm probably not looking at the all the positives.

Q. Are you talking about the inadvertent noise?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, the person purposely trying to mess me up, yeah.

Q. I'm going to ask you to think two weeks ahead. When you look back, some of these really close tiebreaker losses, is the message you draw from that that you are right there or that there's still a gulf or is it kind of both?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I mean, I'm right there. Like, I mean, typically I'm good at tiebreakers. I feel like my tiebreaker record throughout my career has definitely been really good.

Yeah, different. Today I played both tiebreakers pretty well. First-set tiebreaker, two points he took on my serve, he played pretty well. I think I made first serves on both of them.

Second-set tiebreaker, I played fine, too.

I think the tiebreaker I lost to Casper may be a bit different. I didn't play quite as well.

Yeah, I mean, I'm right there. It's small margins in tennis. It's always like that. It's very small margins. Just need to get that little bit better and I'm right there.

Q. Sorry about what influenced the loss today. Are we wrong to believe that for both players this intentional interference is something that is frowned upon? Is there something you would recommend as the actor on the court what can be done about it?

TAYLOR FRITZ: It one of those things. It's like what can you do? If you make a rule that you can replay a point, then the guy is just going to yell when I'm about to win a point, then we're going to have to replay. It's just going to happen the reverse way.

I can't expect anybody to be like, Replay the point. In that situation, I can't say that I would do that either. I can't expect anyone to do anything differently.

I don't know. I don't know what to say. I think that's what makes it even more frustrating. It's like, you know, I kind of got screwed and there's nothing that really can be done about it.

You get used to playing in absolute silence your whole career. It's normal that the crowd maybe makes a noise when there's a crazy point going on. You expect it, you're ready for it. But someone just, like, flat-out screaming to purposely try to throw you off, it's not something you're ever used to. When it happens, it's an absolute shock.

It's disgusting then.

Q. Your next match will be on Thursday against Italy in Davis Cup. I understand is now difficult to think about Davis Cup in this moment. Italy doesn't know who's going to play. There are a lot of players who are injured, half injured. What do you expect? How important is it for America? When Sampras won the Davis Cup, he said, In America they don't care very much about Davis Cup. Many things have changed maybe since then. What is your opinion?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, he's right. It's not as big of a deal for people in the U.S. maybe. If we were to win it, hopefully people would care.

We're still, all of us, I've talked to all of the guys on the team now, like, we're all going there with full intentions to try and win it. We want to win it.

So, yeah, obviously right now not really thinking about it, but give me like a day or two and I'll be there and I'll be locked in and we'll be ready to try and win it.

Q. One more question about the aspect of belonging. You're a top-10 player now. Do you feel like at this point going into next year that that is where you are, where you should be? How do you balance both the confidence that can give you but also a kind of external pressure or internal pressure?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, it's definitely not, I guess, easy to be in the top 10, to accumulate all the points. There is, I guess, added stress to produce the consistent results that you need to stay in it.

I absolutely feel like I belong. I think that I've proved that I belong in the top 10 and I belong here. I just need to keep working hard.

Fortunately for me I think there's a lot of positives to take out of this year where I finished. I finished where I did and I missed pretty much the whole clay court season, didn't have any training going into the beginning of the hard court season. I was dealing with injuries, and I still was able to produce a really solid year.

I'm just excited to kind of get back to work, keep improving, next year look to cement my spot even more.

Q. You made your debut at the event this year. What are the main learning experiences you can take from the past six, seven days?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Honestly, I don't know. I think the event's amazing. I like that you can lose a match and still have the opportunity to come back and improve. It's a whole different thing. I've never lost a match and then immediately had to just, like, lock in straight back to it, do everything after the match the same as I would if I had won because I have to get ready to play again.

I think it's a good lesson to learn in just staying locked in, like, all the time. On tour the top players are just consistent every week. That's one thing you can take out of it. Even after you lose, you just kind of stay on it.

Q. Obviously you were so down after the US Open loss. What did you do to pick yourself up off the mat and produce results in the fall?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, the only thing you can do after that is to just get back to work and try to do better. Obviously take a couple days to be really sad about it. I'm not going to let that ruin or define the rest of the year. If anything, it's going to motivate me more to get back and have a big result.

Yeah, I mean, after US Open, it was great. Laver Cup, Tokyo. I worked really hard. I was extra motivated after that loss. It's really the only thing you can do after that, is just go back to work.

Q. Don't you think this year is a very strange year where some people cannot play slams, and four Masters 1000. Some others like Medvedev after the Australian Open lost eight times against the top 10. Here he played three tiebreakers in the third set and lost them all. Djokovic is considered by everybody the favorite of the tournament, wherever he plays. Then he struggles. What is your impression of this year?

TAYLOR FRITZ: It's been a crazy year. I think my takeaways are that when Novak has played, he's been the best player. There's no doubt about that. When he hasn't played, which is a lot of the year, we've seen a lot of different results because when you take him out of the equation, I think everybody else playing is extremely close in level and it's going to come down to who's playing the best that week, what the court conditions are, how it's playing.

I think when you, like, take Novak out of the equation, I think there's 15 to 20 people that can all beat each other on any given day given the circumstances. That's the reason for a lot of these different results, different people winning. It's just how it happens.