Taylor Fritz came through a tough battle with Fabian Marozsan to win his opening match at the Shanghai Masters.
After conceding the first set, the American clinched two tiebreaks to overcome the Hungarian 2-6, 7-6, 7-6, and advance to the third round of the ATP Masters 1000 event.
Fritz, set to play Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in his next clash, reached the semifinals of the Shanghai Masters last year before falling to Novak Djokovic.
His campaign at this year’s edition of the competition is off to a rocky start, though, and after his narrow victory, the world number four voiced his frustrations about a change the event has made this season.
Taylor Fritz reacts after winning his first match in Shanghai
When asked in his on-court interview how he was able to find his way back into the match, Fritz said: “I just tried to keep myself motivated throughout the match.
“A lot of things were just not going my way. I wasn’t winning any of my break point opportunities. He was capitalising on his.
“I felt like in the game I got broken in the first, like the lines here are just like the skinniest lines ever. He hit two balls on the baseline. There’s not much I can do about it.
“When you’ve been on such a long stretch, it’s easy to kind of just get down and be like, ‘ah, you know, it’s just not my day-to-day, go home,’ and I just had to keep motivating myself to compete and just stay with him. I was able to play my way and serve my way out of those 0-30s and take it in breakers.”
A number of ATP stars have noticed a difference in the speed of the courts at the Shanghai Masters this year compared to previous seasons, and Fritz admitted he was not a fan of the change.
“It is incredibly slow. If I’m being honest, it’s a very bad change here. Last year, the courts were obviously fast on the speed index, but the balls were very slow, so I actually thought the tournament here was played on the slightly slower side, but it was alright.
“It wasn’t like insanely slow. Now they slowed the courts down. The balls are maybe not quite as slow, but they’re still pretty slow.
“You play three balls into the ball change, and they’re massive, and you can’t do anything with the ball. Not to mention the humidity as well. It slows it down as well. It feels like the ball’s not going anywhere.”
Taylor Fritz says the scheduling of his first match was ‘brutal’
Fritz’s first match in Shanghai took place just three days after losing the final of the Japan Open to Carlos Alcaraz.
He called the decision to schedule his match on Friday instead of Saturday ‘brutal’.
“I injured myself in that Tokyo final, and I’m still feeling that a bit on the leg. I’m very lucky, actually. I felt way better than I expected to for this match, so that’s a huge positive as far as the injury goes.
“But it’s an incredibly tough turnaround. The conditions are really different. I just couldn’t get a feel for how the ball was going to bounce on this court.
“It’s really slow. You just have to have to play very differently, and it would have been nice to get some practice sets in, and I just didn’t have the time for that.”
The US number one’s next opponent, Mpetshi Perricard, took him to a decisive fifth set in their first tour-level meeting at Wimbledon in the summer, and will now play him on hard court for the first time.
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