Taylor Fritz tries to see the glass half full

The loss to Alex De Minaur cost Taylor Fritz dearly as he was eliminated from the ATP Finals. “I think I played really well the first two matches. Today, on the other hand, was not my best performance – he admitted in the press conference – Once again, a lot of the difficulties I had depended on the way De Minaur hits the ball”.

“He would often guess the side on my serve, sometimes almost predicting where I was going to serve – added the U.S. -This made it difficult to serve, because I was throwing serves that usually don&#8217t come back, and instead he had already taken three steps to that side as I was throwing the ball. Then he was shooting really strong answers at me. He really did a lot of things well”.

“Yes, probably today’s is the match I am least satisfied with – continued the world number six -. The other two, in my opinion, I played them well and did a lot of things that maybe I had not been able to do lately. In the first two matches I responded exceptionally well. That was something I had not been able to do as well as usual this year, so I was happy with that. The serve, the response, I mean…Some positives are there. Of course now I feel quite frustrated”.

Explanation on the difference between the ’era of the ‘big three’ and the current one, dominated by Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner: “Now we are only left in the ‘big two’ (smiles). I think the difference is that, in the days of the ‘big three’ I was a much less strong player than I am today. Now, if I play well, I can have a balanced game against Carlos, as we have seen. Yes, I have to keep improving. That is my goal. Obviously those two are ahead of everyone. The boards become more open only when one of them doesn&#8230t play; like in Shanghai, where Carlos didn&#8230t participate, or if Jannik loses early, things like that. But no, I wouldn‘t say everything is ‘open’. If you want to win a big title, you most likely have to beat one, maybe even both. So my focus now is to get healthy, so then I can spend time on the court training and improving, working on what I need to improve and try to close the gap”.