MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Taylor Fritz doesn’t watch too much tennis in his downtime, but he made sure to have time set aside to watch the final match of the afternoon on the stadium court at the Miami Open on Tuesday.
On one side was Carlos Alcaraz, the No. 1 player in the Association of Tennis Professionals rankings and 2022 US Open champion. On the other was Tommy Paul, Fritz’s close friend and, at No. 6, the second highest-seeded American left in the men’s draw of the 2023 Miami Open. The winner would head to the quarterfinals to face Fritz in the highest-profile showdown of the Open so far.
Fritz is the highest ranked American in the world and now solidly in the top 10 getting to No. 5 last month. He’s playing the most consistent tennis of his career this year, and he’ll have a worthy foil to face him later this week at Hard Rock Stadium when he plays in the Miami quarterfinals for the first time.
“I’m very excited to watch that match. I don’t usually watch much tennis, but I’m excited to see that,” said Fritz, who recently bought a home in Miami-Dade County. “I’m going to have to raise my level even more.”
Fritz held up his end in drama-free fashion Tuesday. The No. 9 seed breezed to a 6-4, 6-4 win against No. 7-seed Holger Rune in just 1:24 in the first match of the day at the stadium court. Fritz, 25, has won 20 of 25 matches to start the year, still not dropped a set through three matches in Miami Gardens and now been to at least the quarterfinals of four straight tournaments, including a win at the 2023 Delray Beach Open last month.
He will next square off against Alcaraz, a 6-4, 6-4 winner over Paul.
Each time Fritz has taken center stage at the stadium this week, it has been to an announcement as the “No. 1 American in the world” and he has looked the part in every one of those matches.
If he wins the tournament, he’ll have one of the biggest victories of his still-young career and climb back up to No. 6.
“It’s great that just my average level has gone up a lot,” Fritz said. “I’m playing at a level that I think I can do over and over again, and it’s nice that level can put me in the top 10. I felt like last year I was very boom or bust, like either playing really good on a week and I could just go win the tournament, or I would just lose in the first or second round, so it is nice to feel more consistent.”
This and that
— No. 10-seed Elena Rybakina became the first player into the Miami Open semifinals Tuesday, dismantling No. 25-seed Martina Trevisan for a 6-3, 6-0 win on the stadium court.
— Jannik Sinner, even at only 21, can sometimes get overshadowed by Alcaraz’s teenage surge to stardom, but the 6-foot-2 Italian is making an early case to be perhaps the chief rival to the 19-year-old Spaniard in the next generation of men’s tennis. His torrential start to 2023 continued with a 6-2, 6-4 dismantling of No. 6-seed Andrey Rublev on the grandstand court Monday in the Round of 16. Sinner, the No. 10 seed, has won 17 of 21 matches to start the year and now will face Emil Ruusuvuori in the quarterfinals later this week.
— Bianca Andreescu, 22 and unseeded less than four years removed from winning the 2019 US Open, was one of the feel-good stories of the Open until another injury Monday forced her to withdraw in the fourth round. Andreescu, who upset No. 7-seed Maria Sakkari in Round 2 on Friday and was going toe to toe with No. 18-seed Ekaterina Alexandrova in Round 4, needed a wheelchair to get off the stadium court after injuring her left ankle. “I’ve never felt this pain before,” she said before leaving the court, which meant something coming from the Canadian, who also suffered a torn meniscus in 2019 and a nagging back injury last year, and was starting to inch toward a return to her old form.
