Taylor Fritz has enjoyed the best run at a major of his career at Wimbledon, where he is into the quarter-finals without losing a set. The 11th-seeded American will face a tough challenge in the last eight against second seed Rafael Nadal, who has won the first two majors of the season.
It will be a rematch of this year’s BNP Paribas Open final, in which Fritz defeated Nadal for his first ATP Masters 1000 title.
Before the match, ATPTour.com caught up with Fritz’s coach, Michael Russell, to speak about his charge’s run at SW19, his message for Fritz, why the 24-year-old needs to be aggressive against Nadal and more.
How fun has it been for you to see all the hard work coming out at another big event like this?
It’s great. You know how tennis is, there are so many ups and downs. Taylor had the injury during the clay-court season with Madrid and Rome and then a couple first-round, early exits in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and in Queen’s.
We put a really good week of training in before Eastbourne and then obviously had that unbelievable week in Eastbourne, not even losing serve and then continued to take that into Wimbledon. It’s fantastic. That’s the pinnacle of coaching. You put the hard work in and then you see the results.
Was that foot injury dating back to what he dealt with at Indian Wells or was it something totally different?
Something totally different, which is unique. Taylor is hypermobile, so sometimes he gets these awkward injuries that just creep up. But he’s got a great physio who tries to keep him as healthy as possible and just had to deal with a metatarsal injury in his foot.
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Photo Credit: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
How has it been seeing the low of Taylor dealing with his injury during the clay-court season and now this high where he is now?
It’s the challenges of playing on Tour. You can’t expect to have title weeks every week. Obviously, you hope to. You try to put the player in the best possible situation with training and he’s got a great team around him with his physios and his consultant. We just try to make him ready to play as well as possible each match.
When it pays off, like it did in Eastbourne, earlier in the year in Indian Wells and now at Wimbledon, it just gives you a sense of joy. But at the same time, it gives Taylor that understanding of why he needs to put all that hard work in, because it does pay off, and that’s the result.
Early in the grass season, were there doubts he would be…
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