Taylor Fritz’s rise to the year-end World No.4 ranking has been a result of a lot of perseverance and effort from the American. Fritz is the country’s biggest hope in the men’s singles category to win a Grand Slam and the No.1 ranking eventually. Former World No.1 Andy Roddick has acknowledged the fact that Fritz has improved as a player in so many aspects, has been more consistent, and has moved better than ever before on the court.
Roddick believes that Fritz showed the best version of himself, but the 2024 season has come with an asterisk of sorts. The 2003 US Open champion claimed that despite Fritz making it to a Grand Slam final and the ATP Finals final for the first time amidst other big tournament or match wins, his struggles against Jannik Sinner were alarming.
The one player that Fritz could not get past in 2024 was World No.1 Sinner. Roddick opined that the American No.1’s best game plays into Sinner’s strengths, and that’s something that he himself faced when he played Roger Federer at his peak in the 2000s.
Roddick indirectly hinted at the fact that he too tried everything he could and was at his best back then, but he ended up often on the wrong side of the matchup with Federer. He empathized with Fritz by adding that he played incredibly well in a season where Sinner was extremely dominant, and Alexander Zverev too had a good finish to become the World No.2.
Speaking about his own experience of being in such a rivalry as a player himself, Roddick was quoted as saying on the ‘Served with Andy Roddick’ podcast –
“I lived it for a long time. I was on the wrong side of that equation. So if you are Taylor Fritz’s camp, it is weird because you have a career best, you have broken the glass ceiling with only making it to the quarters in all Grand Slams, the US Open run, a lot of name value added. But Sinner was dominant from start to finish.”
Roddick is a strong believer in the fact that matchups dictate the sport a lot and a player’s career trajectory largely. He cited the example of Zverev finding it easier to play Sinner more than Fritz, while Sinner had a better time against Fritz. In contrast, the American defeated the German in all their clashes this year.
While Roddick did not specifically mention Federer, the fact that he spoke about Sinner’s season is indeed reminiscent of Federer’s time in the mid-2000s. No other player troubled Roddick as much as the 20-time Grand Slam champion.
Roddick on winning just 3 matches out of 24 against Federer
In an interview with the New York Post in 2022, Roddick lauded the then-retiring Federer for being stronger than him as a player. However, he claimed that the same Federer struggled against Rafael Nadal around the same time. So it was more about Federer feasting on Roddick’s game because that type suited his style of counterattacking.
“It was just a rough matchup,” Roddick said back then.
“There wasn’t much that I did well naturally that he couldn’t counter naturally. Even against Rafael Nadal, I knew my first serve would bother him. I knew that I had a little bit more power through the court.
“And similarly to Federer and Nadal, that matchup is more difficult on Federer because of the lefty and the spins. Federer forced me out of my comfort zone consistently.”
Well, it could be too early to compare Sinner with Federer, but Roddick sees a lot of himself in Fritz. The World No.4 would go back home a happy man but would need to work on his game big time to counter Sinner, who seems to be going from strength to strength with every tournament.
