By Erik Gudris | @atntennis | Tuesday, August 1, 2023
A new week means Taylor Fritz is once again a top seed as he hopes to add another title to his collection this summer.
Fritz is once again the top seed, this week at the ATP 500 Mubadala Citi DC Open event in Washington DC. He hopes to build on his confidence having won last week’s ATP 250 event in Atlanta for his sixth career title.
The 25-year-old Fritz admitted in a media conference that he felt the expectation of winning Atlanta being the top seed there. Yet he hopes the confidence of winning multiple matches will carry through to bigger events.
“Yeah, I mean, I'm happy, really happy to win a title. It definitely felt great. But, yeah, it's not the same feeling as winning, like, Indian Wells or winning Tokyo. You know, it's not,” Fritz said.
But there is a lot of confidence you can take away from being the one seed, having that expectation and still being able to win with the expectation, because that's also never easy when you're playing with all the pressure on you to come through. So there is a lot of positives to take out and obviously feeling confident and coming into this week.”
Now playing in DC for the third time in his career, Fritz is certainly hoping for a better outcome than 2022 when he was forced to retire due to heat exhaustion in the third round to Dan Evans.
Fritz also knows that it’s not just the top players who can gain massive confidence after putting together a string of good wins. Case in point the surprise run of Chris Eubanks to the Wimbledon quarterfinals which started when he won his first career title in Mallorca two weeks earlier.
The same goes for Fritz’s opponent in the Atlanta final last week - Australian Aleksandar Vukic who put together a career best week to reach his first ever ATP main draw final.
“I mean, in tennis, like, confidence is just a really, I think people underestimate how much of a difference it can make. People can just start playing really well, and a lot of people that are ranked 50 to 100, which I guess you said Banks previously to I guess Mallorca, that was his ranking range, and Vukic as well last week, I think he came into the week ranked around 76, something like that, so a lot of these people are very capable of playing that level if they kind of just get going and get some confidence.
I mean, Banks (Eubanks) is a great example. He won Mallorca, and the way he was playing at Wimbledon just off the confidence, he was playing insane. He was playing easily, easily top ten level. That's how it happens.
Same thing with last week. Vukic was playing with a lot of confidence. He beat a lot of good players, and the court definitely suited his game well. He was serving incredibly well and playing at a much higher level than the ranking.”
After receiving a first round bye, Fritz will face either Zachary Svajda or Max Purcell in the second round.
Photo Source: TTV