Taylor Fritz goes back up the hill with first Wimbledon semifinal

If there’s a Sisyphus of the men’s game in the 2020s, his name is Taylor Fritz.

Every few months, the Californian gathers his racquets, tucks his hair behind his Boss headband, and starts back up a new Grand Slam mountain. The goal, as it has been since he joined the tour a decade ago, is to live up to the heavy legacy of past American tennis greatness, and win the first men’s major for his country since 2003.

Fritz has climbed the hill step by painstaking step; nothing about his rise has been meteoric. In 2016, he played all four majors for the first time, and lost in the first round at each of them. From 2018 to 2022, he fell in the third round seven times. From 2022 to 2024, he made the quarterfinals four times, but went no farther. Then, last summer, he leapt all the way to the US Open final—only to run smack into a brick wall named Jannik Sinner.

On Tuesday, Fritz found himself halfway up the hill again, playing Karen Khachanov in his third Wimbledon quarterfinal in the past four years. Fritz’s loss in that round in 2024 had been especially painful. A breakthrough seemed imminent when he reached a fifth set against Lorenzo Musetti, a player ranked 12 spots below him. But that breakthrough would belong instead to Musetti, who won the decider 6-1.

Still, hope spring eternal for Sisyphus, and for Fritz. He felt like his defeats, and his ability to keep climbing despite them, were going to pay off today. For the first time, he was the No. 4 seed and expected to make the semifinals. For the first time, he knew what it felt like to win a match in this round. For the first time, the Wimbledon quarters didn’t feel like a destination for him; they felt like a stop-off on the way to somewhere better.

“It’s given me a lot of confidence in those moments and situations, just having been there, that I can do it again,” Fritz said. “I feel like other years that I was in the quarterfinals here specifically, it felt like a really big deal for me. Going into the match today, I was much more calm and relaxed.”

“It gives me a lot of confidence that I’ve been here before, and I’ve played the pressure matches.”

Fritz certainly started out playing like he had been there before. He was in cruise control for the first two sets, winning them 6-3, 6-4, and holding convincingly. Turbulence hit in the third, which Khachanov won 6-1, but Fritz was at his best in what turned out to be the deciding fourth-set tiebreaker, hitting three aces on his first three serves.

“Really happy with how I rebounded after just an odd third set,” Fritz said. “Played a good tiebreaker to finish the match, and I thought the first two sets, the level was as good as it gets for me.”

Fritz’s countryman and fellow quarterfinalist, Ben Shelton, talked on Monday about how, after making the second week at a major six times, the late rounds feel a little more like “business as usual, on to the next.” This generation of American men—Fritz, Shelton, Tiafoe, Paul—has slowly made themselves believe that they belong there and can compete with the elite.

But climbing the mountain, and reaching the summit, are different things, and they always will be for an American tennis audience that was spoiled for decades by the Slam successes of No. 1 players like Connors, McEnroe, Sampras, Agassi, and Courier.

I think it would be dumb of me to say that grass isn’t my best surface. Taylor Fritz

Which brings us to the next destination for Fritz: A semifinal with Carlos Alcaraz on the Spaniard’s home away from home, Centre Court. Fritz is 0-2 against the defending champion, but he sounded confident in his chances, at least on this surface.

“I’m happy that we’re not playing at the French Open on clay with the French Open balls ‘cause that would be an absolute nightmare,” he said. “I think grass is very much so an equalizer. It can be an equalizer. So trust in how I’m playing. I truly know the way that I played the first two sets today, there’s not much any opponent on the other side can do.”

“I mean, I think it would be dumb of me to say that grass isn’t my best surface,” added Fritz, who won his fourth title on it in Eastbourne last month.

Sisyphus has rolled the ball a step closer to the top of the hill—only to come up against his most monumental task yet. It was never going to happen any other way for Taylor Fritz.