By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday March 30, 2023
After falling to Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets on Thursday night in Miami, Taylor Fritz heaped plenty of praise on the 19-year-old wunderkind. The 10th-ranked American said that Alcaraz was simply unplayable for stretches of their first ever meeting in Hard Rock Stadium.
“I did feel the level of the first three games was absolutely unbearable,” Fritz said. “He was hitting clean winners off of 110-mile-an-hour second serves I was hitting into his body. I'm stepping up and crushing backhands cross, and he's going open-stance backhand line winners off of that.
“That wasn't the level for the rest of the match. I was able to settle in much more, and he wasn't doing that the whole match. But he obviously possesses that level, and for those first couple of games, it was pretty overwhelming.”
Fritz went on to say what many others have said about Alcaraz recently: that he possesses one of the more complete games that we’ve ever seen from a teenager.
“It's not even what I saw today,” Fritz said. “It's what I have seen for a while now. I said it a year ago when I watched him play, for how young he is, he just has all the tools.
“He can come to net, he can dropshot you, he can lob you, he's incredibly fast, he has all the power, his forehand is good, his backhand is good.”
Fritz says there are myriad ways he can beat his opponents, which helps explain why he is the youngest No.1 in ATP history and already 18-1 on the season in 2023.
“It's very rare to see someone so young so… developed in their game and not really have anything that they need to work on so much,” Fritz said. “He has tons of different ways to play, and he can incorporate tons of different game plans to play different players because he has so many tools to win a match. I think that's something that I wouldn't say any of those people had at such a young age. There is always – I guess – things that people need to improve on.”
Alcaraz compared to the Big Three
Fritz made interesting comments when he was asked to compare facing Alcaraz to facing the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
The American says that he felt Alcaraz was more aggressive and smothering.
“I definitely felt like I had more breathing room against those guys than in this match,” he said. “I think that, you know, it's different game styles. Novak will have these long rallies, but he'll kind of slowly get you out of position and overwhelm me. I still feel like I can hang in these rallies for a long time and get more chances to attack.
“I think that I'd go back to the first couple games of the match. He just hits winners off of a lot of shots, winners and shots that hurt me off of a lot of shots that people normally aren't hurting me off of – Definitely less.
“I just felt he was more offensive and pressed me a lot more.”