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I possess a few opinions regarding the comments delivered by ESPN commentator a well-known announcer after the Serbian champion's victory over the American player during the New York major quarter-finals. Look – the athlete represents American, the commentator is from the US – and sports often encourage patriotic sentiment. Some letdown would have been understandable. Rather, he invoked the continued absence of American men at the majors: none of them has won a trophy since the last American champion in 2003, and Fritz had been the final representative in the competition.

Everyone love a storyline, myself included. But come on. Even if the American defeated Djokovic for the initial occasion, force of nature the Spanish star was waiting in the next round, who Fritz has yet to beat in an competitive encounter. And if he’d someway survived that, it would have been title holder Jannik Sinner, versus him the American had lost 10 of the previous eleven sets. The two young stars had also divided the last seven major titles (plus Alcaraz proceeded to defeat a fatigued Djokovic in the next round). He said in press after the loss that he in fact preferred his draw, because it presented the opportunity to beat the three best players in the world in succession. He is more than within his right to aspire to the accomplishment; an athlete is supposed to have faith in themselves. But going into that Djokovic quarter-final who else sensibly had the lack of American champions in mind?

Coco Gauff’s weaker delivery the sole barrier between her and consistent victories

Fritz, twenty-eight, is ranked number four in the world entering this week’s ATP World Tour Finals and has won his previous six matches over third-ranked the German with growing comfort. Presumably he might take that spot for himself in the coming years. But evidently that right now, that’s as far as he can rise: Sinner and Alcaraz lie a chasm of performance metrics away. Fritz’s top-class delivery and powerful strength on both front side and backhand are more than adequate to dispose of most opponents on the ATP tour. Against the handful of generational talents, though, he is often overmatched. The past few years has seen the interesting emergence of tall, gangly players who can nonetheless move around with the surprising speed and fluidity of much shorter players. He is six-foot-five and looks it. His movement is rigid, as if he’s still getting used to his limbs. So he’ll rarely steal a point that the opponent was dictating, and hitting a soft shot versus him is usually a safe bet. That acts as a quite severe limitation on his upside.

Fritz has achieved a several significant, unexpected improvements over the years. At the beginning of the decade, he was circling the bottom of the world's best thirty. Two years after, he was approaching the elite ten. Last year, he unexpectedly exploded up to No 4 – and held the spot. But the subsequent step, mixing it up with and beating all-time-greats like the young Spaniard, the Italian, and including a declining Serbian, is the highest of all. What could the commentator have been thinking? That the American, in 2025, was a serious threat to defeat them all back-to-back? That it was appropriate mentioning the ongoing drought of American men winning major titles when Fritz had departed the US Open in the quarter-finals? The thirst is just too much and the respect for the difficulty of the challenge too little.

The American star made a career-best advancement to the Wimbledon semi-finals in the summer.

The American's performance in that very quarter-final should have been enough of an sign. The Serbian won in four sets, a victory that only seemed tenuous for moments towards the very end, when the American had saved a few championship opportunities and had a opportunity to maintain serve for 5-5. The pair appeared well-balanced during the rallies, with the American creating numerous opportunities to win the opponent's serve. But Djokovic rescued break point after break point, extending the run to the brink of agony. When he finally did convert a single of the chances at 5-5 in the second set, he immediately produced a horrendous service game to drop serve again; Djokovic had drawn him into a battle secondary to the main contest and compelled him to use far too much effort to win it. Facing match points in the last game, Fritz’s primary delivery sailed to heaven. He prolonged the contest twice on his backup delivery, but ultimately committed two errors. It wasn’t a collapse, in my opinion, just a result of needing to hit too many second serves.

The contest was quite ironclad proof that the American is insufficiently skilled to beat any form of Djokovic, that lost to Alcaraz in the next round and did not particularly seem like he thought he could triumph. This is perfectly acceptable – Djokovic is the best player ever, and might not be at the height of his physical powers anymore, but has acquired sufficient experience and tactical know-how to compensate for a significant portion of the decline. The problem is those who were anticipating Fritz to prevail, and pressuring him to achieve that, when he was yet to done anything that suggested he could.

The American is an asset to the circuit nonetheless. He’s a calm, thoughtful presence in media sessions, more so than virtually everyone on the ATP aside from Daniil Medvedev, willing to not only express his emotions or the tactic he felt determined a contest, but explain it. That he should shoulder the majority of the responsibility for America failing to spawn a men's grand slam winner since the last American titlist seems unjust. (Now that the fellow American is competing alongside him in the rankings, perhaps they can share that burden.)

ATP Finals: Player Divisions

Jimmy Connors Group

• Carlos Alcaraz (Sp)
• Taylor Fritz (US)
• Alex de Minaur (Aus)
• Lorenzo Musetti (It)

Swedish icon Group

• The Italian champion
• Alexander Zverev (Ger)
• The rising American
• Félix Auger-Aliassime (Can)

“I’d probably dwell on it forever if I fail to do it,” Fritz informed a journalist in June of winning a major. I hope he realizes that he’s not a failure if he doesn’t achieve that goal, that overcoming Alcaraz and Sinner’s young, terrifying empire is actually extremely improbable for everybody else. {