Taylor Fritz has never won a major – he was a finalist last year at the US Open and the ATP Finals – and has only one victory in the Masters 1000, the 2022 Indian Wells title when he defeated Rafa Nadal in the final, but he has just achieved a milestone for American tennis that legends such as Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick could not boast of.
The world No. 4 advanced to the quarter-finals of the Canadian Masters 1000 after defeating Czech Jiri Lehecka 7-6(4), 6-7(5), 7-6(5), in a match in which he had to save nine break points. He will now face Russia’s Andrey Rublev, Alejandro Davidovich’s conqueror, for a place in the semi-finals.
Fritz, 27, made his Masters 1000 main draw debut in 2016, but it was not until 2021 that he achieved his first notable result, reaching the semifinals at Indian Wells. Until then, he had never reached the quarterfinals and four years later he has achieved that goal in the nine tournaments of the second tier of the ATP.
The only major tournament in which he has not reached at least the quarter-finals is Roland Garros, where he has the last 16 in 2024 as his best result. Even so, he has become the first non-European player to reach at least the quarter-finals in all the Masters 1000 tournaments.
Sampras, Agassi and Roddick, for example, did not make it that far in Monte Carlo, and another American tennis legend, Jim Courier, failed in Hamburg. We are talking about players with a much richer track record than Fritz, there is no doubt about that, but that only increases his merit.
Fritz has joined a select group of ten active players, all from the Old Continent. Among them, interestingly, is Carlos Alcaraz but not Jannik Sinner, who only has the Paris Masters left.
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