NEW YORK – As he watched one last errant forehand from his higher-ranked, more-accomplished U.S. Open opponent land wide, Taylor Fritz dropped his neon-colored racket, clenched both fists and screamed, “Come on!”
Fritz gathered himself and his equipment, walked to the net for a hug with No. 4 Alexander Zverev, who twice was a Grand Slam runner-up, then stepped to the center of Arthur Ashe Stadium, spread his arms wide and yelled again, “Come on!”
After years of climbing the rankings, of becoming the top American man in tennis, of coming close to making a breakthrough at one of his sport’s four most important events, Fritz finally came through at home, beating Zverev 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (3) on Tuesday at Flushing Meadows to reach a major semifinal for the first time.
The 12th-seeded Fritz, a 26-year-old from California, entered the day with an 0-4 record in Slam quarterfinals.
“I’ve had a lot of looks at quarterfinals over the last couple of years, and today just felt different,” Fritz told the crowd that supported him throughout the win, including with frowned-upon applause after some of Zverev’s first-serve faults. “I really felt like it was my time to take it a step further.”
Now he is headed to the final four at the U.S. Open, where he will meet either No. 9 Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria or No. 20 Frances Tiafoe of the United States. Those two were scheduled to play each other on Tuesday night.
“It’s cool I’m in the semis. But I very much have the mindset of ‘the job’s not done,’” Fritz said. “A question I got asked pretty much every time I lost in my quarterfinals was, ‘What’s it going to take to go further?’ And the answer I gave was always: Just keep putting myself in these situations, and I’ll become more comfortable in these situations and get better. That’s definitely what happened now. The quarterfinals didn’t feel like, I don’t know, this big thing to me like it has been, I guess, in the past.”
A Fritz-Tiafoe semifinal — “That could be crazy,” Fritz said — would be the first between a pair of American men at any major since 2005, when Andre Agassi defeated Robby Ginepri in New York.
No American man has won a Grand Slam singles trophy since Andy Roddick triumphed at the U.S. Open in 2003.
The other men’s quarterfinals will be played Wednesday: No. 1 Jannik Sinner vs. No. 5 Daniil Medvedev, and No. 10 Alex de Minaur vs. No. 25 Jack Draper.
In the women’s bracket, No. 13 Emma Navarro of the U.S. reached her first Grand Slam semifinal by taking the last six games in a 6-2, 7-5 victory over No. 26 Paula Badosa and next faces No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka or No. 7 Zheng Qinwen.
Fritz used his usual blend of big serving, winning 20 of 21 points when his first serves landed in during the fourth set, and big forehands, but he also was effective at the net — winning 16 of 24 points when he pushed forward — and returned well enough to accumulate 10 break points.
“There’s still work to be done, but his transition game is getting better. The fact he’s seeing it pay off, especially here at the U.S. Open in some big points … he’s starting to buy into it and believe it,” said Fritz’s coach, Michael Russell, specifically mentioning a volley that won a 24-stroke exchange to make it 5-2 in the concluding tiebreaker. “It’s good to see. That’s a big step that we’ve been really emphasizing for him to win (at) these bigger stages. You can’t just serve and be on the baseline.”
Even though Fritz only converted two of those break chances, it meant he constantly put pressure on Zverev, a German who made it to the finals of the U.S. Open in 2020 and the French Open this year.
“My backhand, I don’t remember, since being on tour, hitting my backhand this badly. I just don’t. I mean, I was missing shots which were in the middle of the court with no pace, and (they landed in the) bottom of the net. Terrible. Just absolutely terrible by me,” Zverev said, shutting his eyes and shaking his head.
“My forehand was OK, actually. My serve was OK. But my most reliable shot, the shot that I’m most known for, the shot that you normally wake me up at 3 a.m. and I would not miss, was absolutely not there today,” added Zverev, who also lost to Fritz at Wimbledon in July, “and I have no words for it, to be honest.”
He described himself as “angry.”
Fritz’s latest quarterfinal loss came at the All England Club against Lorenzo Musetti.
The other three? Two came against 24-time Slam champion Novak Djokovic; the other against 22-time Slam champion Rafael Nadal.
One was at last year’s U.S. Open against Djokovic, who went on to win the title. Djokovic was eliminated this time in the third round last week; Nadal sat out the tournament.
Russell said those past stumbles were not a topic of conversation before this quarterfinal.
“We would never talk about, ‘Hey, you haven’t been to the semifinals of a Slam before,’ because you’re not really breeding the positivity factor to it,” Fritz’s coach said. “It’s more about, ‘You’ve been in this position before and come out here and use your weapons that you have, and use the new weapons that we’re trying to create, and just go out there and play your game, use the crowd, love the excitement and the actual competition and battle, which he does, and just go feed off it.”
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