Taylor Fritz won his first Masters title by holding off a full-throttle charge from Rafael Nadal at Indian Wells, and ending his win streak at 20

Destiny in the Desert: Our interview with Taylor Fritz, hometown champion at Indian Wells

If you like your tennis matches to come with a major plot twist, you didn’t have to wait long for one during Taylor Fritz’s 6-3, 7-6 (5) win over Rafael Nadal in the BNP Paribas Open final on Sunday.

Coming in, all eyes were on Fritz’s right ankle. He had hurt it in the last game of his semifinal win over Andrey Rublev on Saturday, and on Sunday morning he had to cut his practice short because he could barely walk, or even stand, on it. As the final began, there were two questions on everyone’s mind: Would Fritz be able to start the match? And if so, how long could he last?

It turned out those were the right questions, but they were being asked about the wrong guy. Three games in, it was clear that Fritz, who was bombing serves and forehands for winners, was fine; he had numbed his ankle and it was, as he said, a “complete non-issue.” It was his opponent who was struggling to move, and swing, and put the ball in the court. Nadal had endured foot pain for most of the week, and in his semifinal win over Carlos Alcaraz he had strained a pec muscle. Both of those injuries afflicted him again in the first set against Fritz, but the pec was especially painful.

“When I’m breathing, when I’m moving, it’s like a needle all the time inside here,” said Nadal. “I get dizzy a little bit because it’s painful. It’s a kind of pain that limits me a lot.”

Naturally, Nadal pushed himself to defy those limits, and transformed what looked to be an anti-climactic afternoon into a crowd-rousing thriller. First, Nadal got help from the tournament doctor and trainer. Then he began to take full cuts at the ball, and run down some of Fritz’s bombs. By the time he held for 1-1 in the second set, his grunt was back, and so was his fist-pump.

Honestly, I wanted to make it perfect before clay. Rafael Nadal

From there, the match lurched into roller-coaster mode, as the points grew longer and wilder, and the momentum swings more head-spinning. Nadal went up a break at 2-1, then gave it back. He reached break point four times at 2-2, only to see Fritz save them all. At 4-4, Nadal had another break point, but he put a makable forehand pass into the net. With Rafa serving at 4-5, Fritz reached match point, and Nadal saved it with a fearless forehand.

In the second-set tiebreaker, Rafa amped his attack up further. He had been unusually edgy and negative early in the day, because of his injury; now he used that edge and emotion to spark some unusually aggressive play. He won one point with a foray to the net, and another with a smash that he hit while sprinting forward at full speed. That shot put him up 5-4, two points from the set, with two serves to come.

Again, Nadal played a brilliant attacking point, and left himself with a swing volley into an open court that he would normally make nine times out of 10, if not more. But this time Rafa took the attack too far. With the crowd ready to explode, he rushed the shot and overhit it wide. Instead of 6-4, the score was 5-5. Instead of Nadal leveling the match at one-set all, Fritz won the title.

“I tried till the end,” Nadal said. “That’s it. Even I had my chances in the second set, I didn’t covert too many chances.”

Nadal pulled off a series of Houdini acts to reach the Indian Wells final, but he couldn’t close with another. With the defeat, his season-opening win streak came to an end at 20.

“Honestly, I wanted to make it perfect before clay,” Nadal said. “Have been very, very, very beautiful…Of course, the last two months I have have been amazing, unforgettable, very emotional. I enjoy things that I never thought I could live again a few months ago.”

Nadal said he’s “worried” about his chest pain, and how long it’s going to take for him to recover. But he also said that today was Fritz’s day, that he deserved to win, and that “I lost against a great player.”

Indeed, once Rafa saved a match point, it appeared that Fritz would soon become the Spaniard’s latest comeback victim. But Fritz had also kept his cool through some difficult moments this week. Today he never allowed his level to dip for long, and never let himself get rattled by Nadal or the California crowd that was roaring its support for a Spaniard. Fritz was doing the same things in the second-set tiebreaker—taking the ball on the rise, letting his ground strokes fly—that he was doing in the first game. He opened the match with a crosscourt forehand winner, and closed it with a forehand down the line that Nadal couldn’t reach.

“It’s been the forehand that’s really been clicking for me,” Fritz said. “Just being able to unload and trust it. It used to be a shot that would just misfire, almost like lose me matches. Now it’s like I can trust it no matter what to really pull the trigger on a big point, get extra free points.”

Fritz, a San Diego native, calls Indian Wells his home tournament, and he called his win today over Rafa “insane,” a “wild dream you never expect to actually happen,” a “combination of all these crazy things that I never thought possible,” among other superlatives. He’s the first American to win Indian Wells since 2001, and the first U.S. man to win a Masters 1000 since 2018, and he’ll move to a career-high No. 13 tomorrow. A match that began with a plot twist finished with another; it was Fritz, rather than Nadal, who remained steady when it mattered most.

Like Rafa with his pec muscle, Fritz will have to wait and see how his ankle is. Hopefully, there’s no long-lasting damage to either of them. These two competitors left their bodies on the court to create something special for everyone watching.