“Claylor” The Contender: Taylor Fritz defies expectations with consistent clay-court swing

ROME, Italy—It started as a joke, but Taylor “Claylor” Fritz is deadly serious about his clay-court confidence at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia.

“For me, clay season's a huge part of the season,” he said after a 6-2, 6-7 (11), 6-1 win over Grigor Dimitrov.

“It's three Masters, some other tournaments, and a Grand Slam. How can I ever be a top player that I want to be if I can't produce some results during the clay season? 'Cause, like, I'm not that good where I'm going to dominate everywhere else. I always thought, like, if I want to be a Top 10 player, I need to be putting results in on clay.”

For American men, the results Fritz has put in this season are unprecedented: with the victory over Dimitrov, the 26-year-old not only backed up a semifinal finish at the Mutua Madrid Open, but he also became the first U.S. man to reach the quarterfinals or better of all three clay-court Masters 1000 tournaments.

Though the 2015 junior Roland Garros runner-up hasn’t always considered the surface a natural fit, he credits a consistent clay-court diet as key to his consistency on courts that have long tripped up his countrymen.

“I've kind of committed to this clay court swing, playing all the events, for a long time,” Fritz said on Tuesday. “I think the generation before me, a lot of the Americans wouldn't want to play the whole swing or they skip Monte-Carlo, whatever.

“I've committed to playing the full swing several years of my career. I think I've just been kind of figuring out what works for me, using the parts of my game that work well on clay, kind of letting those parts of my game take over, whereas they might take a bit of a backseat when I'm playing on a hard court.”

An underwhelming Sunshine Swing culminated in an opening-round loss at the Miami Open, but Fritz has dug into the dirt with gusto this spring, riding momentum from a final in Munich into the semis in Madrid, where he avenged a 2023 Roland Garros loss to Francisco Cerundolo in the last eight.

“I think my forehand is great for clay,” Fritz said earlier in the week. “I love the high ball and hitting a really spinny, heavy forehand and having time on it. Clay is probably the best surface for my forehand.”

Seeded eleventh at the Foro Italico, Fritz has dropped just one set thus far, but what a set, one that went to a 13-11 tiebreaker with Dimitrov, who saved a match point but needed 10 set points to only briefly put the American at bay.

“I put it behind me and kind of accepted, ‘Look, if I keep thinking about this and letting it bother me, all the things I could have done, should have done on that point with that shot, I'm probably going to just lose focus, play a bad game and lose the match,’” Fritz said in his post-match press conference.

“I think I’ve always been good about, if I let a chance slip away, just try to rebound and not let it bother me,” he continued in his visit to the Tennis Channel Live Desk.

That short memory helped him make it through the match without losing serve, saving all 11 break points faced against Dimitrov. It will also come in handy against his next opponent, Alexander Zverev: the No. 3 seed leads their head-to-head 4-3, but Fritz won two of their last three meetings, and the pair have never faced off on clay.

“We were lined up potentially last week to play in the quarters, but it’ll be fun; we’ll see what happens,” Fritz told Prakash Amritraj. “We’ve played each other a good amount and known each other a long time.”

Zverev may know Taylor, but “Claylor?” That’s an entirely different look.