Saturday, March 8, 2025

Taylor Fritz

Press Conference

T. FRITZ/M. Gigante

6-3, 7-5

THE MODERATOR: Congrats on your win today. How's the body feeling overall?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, it was a pretty solid match. I told myself going in I can't be too hard on myself in the match, I can't expect too much, because my first practice after taking, like, over a week off was on Tuesday.

So, the good news was I played, I didn't think about I guess my oblique injury once, which is a good sign. That was something that was bothering me a lot throughout my matches in Dallas, Delray, and I was trying to practice in Acapulco. I couldn't really play without being worried about it.

It's good I felt I could play physically and normal today. Definitely some things I want to clean up, need to do better. All in all, it was a pretty solid match.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Obviously your win here, winning the championship, especially the final, a lot of things going on with the practice injury and so forth. A couple of things. When you think back, what is the one takeaway, one thought you have about that match, and do you consider that your greatest win or not?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I don't know if it's my greatest win, but it's my biggest title, for sure. It's the biggest, I guess, like, the biggest moment, I'd say I have won a match in, obviously.

Yeah, I just remember obviously thinking that I wasn't gonna be able to play, and then just going from, like, feeling like I wasn't going to be able to play to just getting like a numbing injection and feeling completely fine and playing the match like I was not injured at all. I felt like it took a lot of pressure off and allowed me to play very freely because of everything that happened before the match, I feel like.

Q. What was your biggest win, if I could follow up? One or two wins.

TAYLOR FRITZ: To be honest, I don't know for sure (smiling). I don't know.

Q. You went against a lefty opponent today, Taylor. When the draws come out or you see that, is that something that has to change your approach and training ahead? I noticed you warmed up with a lefty before. Is it one of those things where it doesn't really make a difference to you?

TAYLOR FRITZ: No, it's definitely, like, just the right thing to do, to, like, practice with lefties before if you're going to play a lefty. I think I could probably get away with not doing it, but there's just no reason not to. You know what I mean?

The second I see that I'm playing him, yeah, I'm trying to find a lefty to practice with, I'm trying to find a lefty to warm up with. That's just giving yourself the best chance to be ready for it.

Q. That oblique injury, was that the first time you've encountered that injury before?

TAYLOR FRITZ: On this side, yes. I tore my left side, had a grade 2, pretty big tear at the end of 2023 in Paris. In Paris I tore it.

So wasn't the worst time, I guess, because I was out for the entirety of the offseason. I believe it was six weeks, five weeks maybe that I didn't play.

I didn't really get an offseason kind of coming into last season, but it ended up working out. Yeah, when I did it on the left side, that was much more serious than this was. That one was, like, I couldn't even, you know, rotate, turn side to side.

This was not bad enough to where -- you know, I could serve totally fine, I could hit a lot of shots with no pain. It was just certain shots that were bothering me. So it wasn't bad enough for me to just, you know, to stop. I tried to play through it for a couple of weeks.

Q. How long did you shut down for?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I'd say, let me think, I'd say from when I pulled out of Acapulco to then this Tuesday. It was almost two weeks probably, almost two weeks. I tried to just do fitness and, you know, do what I could do, but I didn't hit a ball and just stopped doing all kind of like anything that was rotational.

Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe it had already started to heal a little bit, because the initial injury would have been before Dallas. But yeah, it definitely was prolonging it. In hindsight it was a bad decision to being play Delray and to go to Acapulco. I think hopefully we're over it now.

Q. Obviously you've faced the toughest shots that the tour has; Isner's serve, Rafa's forehand. If you could take a moment and go through the serve, return, forehand, backhand, who are the toughest folks that you faced in those four categories?

TAYLOR FRITZ: It's tough. Serve would be like Reilly or Isner, for sure. Forehand, I don't know. Like, maybe like Rublev, Federer, something like that.

Backhand, maybe Sinner, Zverev. Yeah.

Q. Return?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Return, probably Novak. Novak. Yeah, Sinner, also very good returner.