Taylor Fritz is back in a major ATP tennis final, where only the best of the best remain to be beaten

TURIN, Italy After nearly 74 matches in eleven months of traveling around the world, Taylor Fritz has reached the point where there aren't that many players left for him to beat.

Six days after dispatching an irate Daniil Medvedev, the world number 5. Fritz defeated world number 2 Alexander Zverev 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(3) to become the first American in 18 years to reach the championship match of the ATP Tour finals. Fritz spent most of the final set trying to get out of trouble, then stepped up his serve and drove a series of clean and efficient groundstrokes to take the tiebreak, finishing Zverev with an inside-out forehand.

After nearly two and a half hours of trying to keep his emotions in check, Fritz flexed his arms and let out a bowl! which drowned out the roar of more than 12,000 spectators in the Inalpi Arena. Just like this summer at the US Open, Fritz has reached a plateau that no American has seen since the presidency of George W. Bush. In September, he became the first American man to reach the US Open final since Andy Roddick in 2006 and the first American man to reach a Grand Slam final since Roddick's Wimbledon heartbreak against Roger Federer in 2009.

Now Fritz has become the first American to reach the championship match of the ATP Tour Finals in 18 years, as Roger Federer made short work of James Blake.

“I believed that I belong, that I am one of the best players,” he said at a press conference. It is not results-oriented. It's more that I can feel how I'm playing.

There are American men with flashier games. There are American men with bigger social media profiles, who light up stadiums and Instagram feeds more than Fritz. Fritz wins many more tennis matches.

He reached the quarter-finals or better at three Grand Slams this year. That, along with titles in Delray Beach, Florida and Eastbourne in Britain, as well as semi-finals in Madrid and Shanghai, earned him his second invitation to the Tour Finals in three years, and a second consecutive appearance in the last four of the tournament. .

Taylor Fritz's aggression and resilience have propelled him to a stellar year on the ATP Tour (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

No surprise there. The smooth court and fresh atmosphere of indoor tennis play to his strengths. Fritz likes to make big cuts to the ball. Get rid of the sun and the wind, and get rid of bad bounces, and he's free to close his eyes and rip whenever he gets the chance.

He also had the right opponent.

Fritz has now defeated Zverev in four consecutive matches. Three of them at Wimbledon, the US Open, and here were as tight as a clenched fist, opting for just a handful of points and a service break here and there. Tennis is a sport of matchups and Zverev, like Fritz, has been running out of players to beat lately. He eliminated Carlos Alcaraz from this tournament on Friday. Yet he has something of a Fritz problem, both according to him and from the underlying tennis figures, which also map out a scenario in which Fritz knows how to play better against Zverev than against the rest of the ATP Tour.

On a scale of 1 to 10 devised by TennisViz And Tennis data innovationsZverev's serve return averaged 7.5 out of 10 all season, evaluated based on speed, spin, depth and width. Against Fritz, Zverev's return rating drops to 6.2. That's not a condemnation: Fritz has one of the best serves among the men, especially on an indoor hard court.

Fritz also gets a 7.5 for his efficiency during the season, but against Zverev he has an average of 7.8. More importantly, in this exciting battle between serve and return, for which Fritz practiced 35 minutes of 50 yesterday, Fritz is 8-2 ahead in their last 10 tiebreaks.

He is very competitive, coach Michael Russell said in an interview in Turin on Friday.

In those big moments he wants the racket in his hand. He likes them.

On Saturday, Fritz won the second leg again, with a rating of 8.8 compared to 8.2 for Zverev. He could also empathize with the backhand-versus-backhand baseline battles that Zverev uses to wear down opponents, while using his more aggressive and confident forehand when he needed it.

Zverev looked like he had done enough for most of the match, even after dropping the first set. He seized the initiative to draw the game and at 2-2 in the third set, with Fritz struggling to drive the ball through the court as he had done early on, Zverev appeared to be on his way to the kill. A missed backhand and forehand by Fritz had given Zverev three break points.

Fritz got two back with big serves, before pushing to the front of the court, not his favored zone, to lay a ball away to get to deuce. Then he got the luck of two rare missed backhands from Zverev, who hits that groundstroke as well as anyone in the sport. He held his ground and then took advantage of the German's noted looseness in the most difficult moments, winning the third-set tiebreak at a relative gallop compared to anything that had gone before.

Taylor Fritz has defeated Alexander Zverev four times in a row (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

Fritz was also in the comfort of his serve for most of the afternoon, scoring nearly seven out of 10 and winning 82 percent of the points when he did so. When the crucial moments came, especially when faced with those break points, he told himself to play aggressive instead of safe, and try to beat Zverev when he might not have expected it.

When it was over, Zverev did not flee from the irony that he was one of the few players who managed to get the best out of Alcaraz as he struggled to solve Fritz's riddle. He even talked to Alcaraz this week about how the other opponents are bothering them.

Alcaraz feels comfortable enough against Fritz and Medvedev, but may struggle against big players. Zverev is not bothered by the pace of Alacaraz or Jannik Sinner, but Medvedev and Fritz make for long, shaky afternoons.

He has a much bigger serve, Zverev said of Fritz, pointing to the staccato points that keep him from building rhythm. Fritz also had an extra day of rest while Zverev tangled with Alcaraz for two hours in an emotional, high-level match yesterday afternoon. Zverev said he felt like a jumping ball on Friday. On Saturday, both during his warm-up and at the start of the match, he said he felt empty. His movements felt unnatural. Fritz, as usual, prevented him from finding his flow.

Still, he got his chances in the third set, when he seemed the better player for a long time and didn't take advantage of them.

I did everything, to some extent, maybe better than him, except winning in the important moments, the break points, the tiebreak, he said at his press conference.

That's how you lose a match.

GO DEEPER

The crowd of Turin: the sea of ​​green, white, red and orange by Jannik Sinner

The trick for Fritz now, if you can even call it that, is finding a balance between aggression and execution against the best of the best. There is no mystery as to which players make Fritz uncomfortable. He is 0-12 combined against Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic and 1-3 against Sinner, Italy's tennis hero, whom he has not beaten in three years.

He will face him again on Sunday in front of the Italian crowd with their red wigs and their chants, after Sinner defeated Casper Ruud 6-1, 6-2.

“I really believe the group stage match was closer than you would think just by looking at the score,” he said. 6-4, 6-4 is pretty close. He needs closer.

(Top photo: Shi Tang / Getty Images)