The 2024 US Open ended in the favor of Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner as he got the better of Taylor Fritz in straight sets. Even though Sinner was expected to win the slam, the crowd at the Arthur Ashe Stadium didn’t miss any chance to show their complete support to the homeboy.
Fritz had the crowd cheering for him in the entire match despite Sinner dominating almost throughout the match. But this behavior of the crowd surprised former American tennis player and 4-time grand slam champion Jim Courier.
Courier called out the irony in the spectators’ support as 2 days prior to that, they were cheering for Frances Tiafoe when he was playing against Fritz in the semifinal of the US Open.
“The same people were against Taylor Fritz when he played Frances Tiafoe in the semifinals here 2 nights ago,” Courier said on commentary while the Sinner vs Fritz final clash was going on.
The former World No.1 believed that if the audience admired Fritz’s performance that much, they should have supported him against Tiafoe as well. Or in the other case, if they were against the World No.12 in the semis, why were they supporting him when he was up against Sinner?
The reason behind the audience’s different preferences in the two matches could be the fact that Tiafoe vs Fritz was an all-American clash. Hence, given both of them were home boys, the fans went with their personal choices based on who they thought had a better chance to make it to the final and eventually win.
But on the other hand, Sinner was an Italian and hence, the fans decided to act patriotic and support their home player as they wanted to see an American lifting the Grand Slam at home.
At the same time, Fritz has also enjoyed immense support from fans in other matches, where he faced opponents who weren’t Americans. During his quarter-final clash against Alexander Zverev, he had the entire crowd roaring for him.
However, despite losing the slam, Fritz won the hearts of American fans with the effort he put in. During the post-match presentation, he even apologized to them for not being able to win the title, but received cheers from them instead. This showed how much the fans appreciated his performance and the loss didn’t matter to them.
