Kiss his grass: It’s time to start putting some respect on Fritz’s name

Taylor Fritz is into the semifinals of Wimbledon.
And the only surprising thing about it is that no one should be surprised.
You probably never thought you’d be living in an era in which Fritz advancing to the last four at major championships would be commonplace. The American spent the first six years of his career–from 2014 to 2019–outside the top 30 of the ATP rankings. He didn’t crack the top 20 until February 2022.
Since October of ’22, however, Fritz has been a staple of the top 10. He has become a bastion of consistency. Although consistency can put you in position to do big things, it doesn’t necessarily get you over the hump. It’s part of the reason why Fritz has been written off as a slam title contender. He’s good, but can he be great? Another part could be simply that he is American, and no American man has won a Grand Slam title since the 2003 U.S. Open (Andy Roddick). The stigma is that they, Fritz included, can’t win another one. But, contrary to what Michael Jordan once said, the ceiling isn’t the roof. With the way Fritz blasts forehand and groundstrokes, the ceiling is much higher than that.
Yes, we are here. We have reached the point where Fritz is consistently making deep runs at majors and making it look almost routine. It is true that this is just his second Grand Slam semi, but both appearances have come in the span of the last four slams (he finished runner-up to Jannik Sinner at the 2024 U.S. Open). He has also played in four other major quarterfinals, all since Wimbledon in 2022.
It’s also true that Fritz benefited from a favorable draw in the past couple of rounds at the All-England Club. He might not be here if he was in Sinner’s section or Carlos Alcaraz’s section or even Novak Djokovic’s section. But a whole host of other guys also had great draws in SW19 (Alexander Zverev, to single out just one) and botched their opportunities.
Not Fritz. He did what he was supposed to do against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, Jordan Thompson (via second-set retirement), and Karen Khachanov to secure his spot alongside Alcaraz in a semifinal showdown. And let’s forget Fritz’s first two rounds. The world No. 5 faced the most dangerous unseeded player in the entire field of 128 and managed to get past Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in five sets after trailing two sets to one and 5-1 in the fourth-set tiebreaker. Fritz went up against arguably the second-most dangerous unseeded floater right after that in Mallorca winner Gabriel Diallo. That second-round battle also went the distance. Again, Fritz survived.
With his five Wimbledon match wins, the 27-year-old is now an unbelievable 13-1 on grass in 2025 with titles in Stuttgart and Eastbourne. He is 23-3 on the green stuff dating back to last summer, with two of his four Eastbourne titles during this scorching hot stretch.
“I would say so,” Fritz said when asked if–relative to everyone else on tour–grass is his best surface. “I’ve made obviously a semifinal now, two other quarterfinals at Wimbledon. I think it speaks a lot that half of my titles are on grass, given that grass is such a short part of the year compared to everything else.

“Yeah, I mean I think it would be dumb of me to say that grass isn’t my best surface.”
And it would be dumb of me to pick Fritz against Alcaraz on Friday. But the fact that he even has a realistic chance speaks volumes about how far he has come.
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