US Men's Grand Slam Drought Isn't Taylor Fritz's Responsibility to Bear

I have a few opinions regarding the remarks delivered by the sports network commentator Chris Fowler following the Serbian champion's win over the American player during the New York major quarter-finals. Look – Fritz is American, the commentator is from the US – and athletic competitions often encourage patriotic sentiment. A little bit of disappointment was understandable. Rather, Fowler brought up the ongoing absence of US male players at grand slam tournaments: not one of them has won a trophy since the last American champion in 2003, and he had been the last one standing in the competition.

We all love a storyline, myself included. But really. Suppose Fritz defeated Djokovic for the first time, force of nature the Spanish star was looming in the following match, who Fritz has yet to beat in an official match. And if he’d somehow gotten past that, it would have been title holder the Italian, versus him the American had lost 10 of the last 11 sets. Alcaraz and Sinner had also divided the last seven major titles (plus Alcaraz proceeded to thrash a tired Serbian in the subsequent match). He said in post-match interviews after the loss that he actually preferred his draw, because it offered the chance to beat the top three competitors in the sport in succession. Fritz is more than justified to aim for the accomplishment; an competitor is supposed to believe in themselves. But going into that Serbian last eight match who else in their right mind had the lack of American champions in mind?

The American, 28, is placed number four in the world entering this week’s year-end championships and has won his last six encounters over third-ranked Alexander Zverev with growing comfort. It's likely he could claim that position for himself in the future. But evidently that right now, that’s as far as he can climb: The Italian and Spaniard lie a chasm of performance metrics away. Fritz’s top-class delivery and concussive power on both front side and backhand are more than adequate to dispose of most rivals on the professional circuit. When facing the select few once-in-a-lifetime players, however, Fritz is often overmatched. The last several seasons has witnessed the curious rise of lanky, towering athletes who can nevertheless cover the court with the alarming speed and fluidity of smaller players. Fritz is 6ft 5ins and appears that way. His movement is rigid, as if he hasn't fully adapted to his limbs. So he’ll rarely win a rally that the other player was controlling, and playing a drop shot against him is usually a reliable tactic. That serves as a pretty severe limitation on his upside.

The American has made a number of significant, improbable improvements throughout his career. At the beginning of the decade, he was hovering around the bottom of the world's best thirty. Two years after, he was approaching the top 10. Last year, he suddenly exploded up to No 4 – and held the position. But the subsequent step, mixing it up with and beating all-time-greats like the young Spaniard, Sinner, and including a declining Serbian, is the toughest of all. What was the commentator thinking? That the American, in 2025, was a serious threat to defeat them all back-to-back? That it was worth commenting on the ongoing slump of American men lifting major titles when Fritz had departed the New York major in the quarter-finals? The thirst is simply too much and the respect for the difficulty of the task insufficient.

Fritz’s play in that exact quarter-final should have been enough of an sign. The Serbian won in four sets, a victory that only seemed uncertain for moments towards the very end, when the American had survived a few match points and had a opportunity to hold for 5-5. The pair looked evenly matched during the rallies, with Fritz creating plenty of opportunities to win the opponent's serve. But Djokovic rescued service break opportunity after break point, extending the run to the brink of frustration. When he eventually did convert a single of the chances at 5-5 in the second set, he immediately played a terrible service game to drop serve once more; the Serbian had lulled him into a battle peripheral to the real battle and compelled him to use far too much effort to win it. Down match points in the last game, his first serve sailed to the sky. He extended the match two times on his second serve, but finally double-faulted. It was not a collapse, in my opinion, just a result of having to hit an excessive number of weaker deliveries.

The match was quite ironclad evidence that Fritz is insufficiently skilled to beat any version of the Serbian, who was defeated by the Spaniard in the next round and did not particularly seem like he thought he could triumph. This is perfectly fine – the Serbian is the greatest of all time, and may not be at the height of his physical powers anymore, but has acquired sufficient knowledge and tactical know-how to make up for quite a bit of the decline. The problem is the individuals who were expecting Fritz to prevail, and putting pressure on him to do so, when he was yet to accomplished anything that suggested he could.

The American is an valuable contributor to the tour nonetheless. He’s a calm, reflective voice in media sessions, more so than virtually anyone on the men's tour aside from Daniil Medvedev, prepared to not just say how he feels or the strategy he felt decided a match, but clarify it. That he should bear the brunt of the blame for America failing to spawn a male major champion since Andy Roddick seems unfair. (Now that the fellow American is rubbing shoulders with him in the rankings, perhaps they can share that burden.)

“I would likely think about it indefinitely if I don’t do it,” Fritz told an interviewer in the summer of claiming a major. I hope he realizes that he’s not unsuccessful if he does not achieve that goal, that breaking through the Spanish and Italian's dominant, formidable reign is in fact highly unlikely for everybody else. {