By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday March 25, 2023
After Carlos Alcaraz’s title run at Indian Wells, many tennis aficionados are predicting even bigger things for the future of the dynamic Spaniard. But the current state of men’s tennis, with the Big Three a part-time Big Two, has top American Taylor Fritz predicting big things for himself as well.
Fritz, who reached the third round at the Miami Open on Friday with a win over Emilio Nava, believes that the changes in men’s tennis have left a wide-open playing field for the men, and he plans to take advantage.
“I've been saying it for a while now,” Fritz said. “It's very exciting because you are going into these tournaments feeling like anyone can win. There's, I would say, 10, 15 guys. It's whoever is playing the best on that week, it could be their week, and I think that's really exciting."
Fritz, who won his first Masters 1000 crown last year at Indian Wells with a win over Rafael Nadal, says that his perspective has changed since then.
The retirement of Roger Federer, the injuries of Rafael Nadal and the absence of Novak Djokovic due to his unvaccinated status have no doubt played a role.
Given that Alcaraz is only 19, and has struggled at times with injuries himself over the last six months, it’s hard to consider him a dominant force until he steps up and officially backs up his brilliant 2022 campaign.
All of it leads to a window of opportunity for Fritz in his mind.
“It's changed a lot for me over the last year and a half or so because I always wanted to win tournaments, and I felt like a lot of the times it was highly unlikely that that was going to happen with a lot of these guys in the draws and with how unbeatable they were,” he said. “So it's great to kind of feel like I can come into these tournaments and feel like I have just as good of a chance as anybody else to win it.”