By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday, February 5, 2025
Top-seeded Taylor Fritz needed 63 minutes to blast past familiar foe Arthur Rinderknech on Wednesday in Dallas.
Photo Source: TTV
Blink and you missed it.
Taylor Fritz has played some long – and dramatic – matches with Arthur Rinderknech over the last few years, most notably at Roland-Garros where the Parisian faithful kept the American in a stress vacuum over the course of the pair’s four-set two hour and 50-minute battle in the spring of 2023.
Fritz didn’t take kindly to the way he was treated in the pair’s first meeting on Court Suzanne-Lenglen in Paris, and he especially didn’t like when Rinderknech called him a whiner before their Wimbledon matchup last year. There, Fritz came through again in four sets once again, and afterwards told the Frenchman to “Have a nice flight home.”
Asked about the relationship after Wednesday’s drama-free 6-4, 6-2 win Fritz simply said: “It’s all good.”
“It’s nice to go out and just take care of my serve, get a couple breaks,” Fritz said after the 66-minute thrashing. “Just mixing up the spots, I was hitting close to the lines and not really giving him a chance to figure out where I was serving or getting hits on return – it was a big key to the match.”
Fritz looked every bit the top seed and World No.4 as he lost just seven points on serve and broke Rinderknech three times and won 71 percent of his second-serve return points.
The top American will face the winner of tonight’s final match in Dallas, between Miomir Kecmanovic and Denis Shapovalov.
Rinderknech, on the other side of the coin, drops to 0-13 lifetime against the Top-10.
In other action on Wednesday at Dallas, Reilly Opelka took out Alexander Shevchenko 7-6(3), 6-4, while Michael Mmoh defeated Roberto Carballes Baena 6-1, 3-6, 6-4.
Tomas Machac toppled Kei Nishikori 6-2, 6-2 and Yoshihito Nishioka beat Brandon Nakashima 6-4, 7-6(6). Last but not least, Jaume Munar took out Bu Yunchaokete 7-5, 6-2.