Bill Simons
Oh, dear – in some ways this year has been the worst of times for Taylor Fritz.
Seeking a break from the circuit, he took his famous girlfriend Morgan Riddle to the Super Bowl. What fun!
But Morgan was riddled by hecklers. She told her Instagram followers that she was “grabbed, groped, harassed and cat-called incessantly…by drunk male fans. Dudes were like, ‘I can afford a $20,000 ticket…[so] I can do whatever I want.’”
Back on court, the 21-year-old upstart Ben Shelton had the audacity to briefly rob Taylor of his crown as America’s No. 1 player. Fritz was not pleased. He also wasn’t pleased when he fell short in the US Open final in September, and when, just weeks ago, robbers nearly broke into his London AirBNB in the middle of the night.
To make matters worse, Taylor suffered what we all dread: a disastrous hair misadventure. Never mind that his gorgeous, flowing black hair is the envy of many an aging American tennis icon (sorry, Mr. Agassi, Mr. Roddick and Mr. Blake). A month ago, Taylor dyed his hair blonde. But the experiment quickly devolved into a high-profile mess.
But who are we kidding? For all the, “What-else-can-go-wrong?” bumps in Fritz’s long 2024 journey, his season on court has been absolutely spectacular. No American man has had as star-spangled a tennis season since Andy Roddick in 2003. Fritz not only became the first American man to reach a Slam final in 15 years, he won two titles, reached a career high of No. 4, and Saturday, in Turin, Italy, as he had at Wimbledon, the US Open and the Laver Cup, he downed No. 2 Alexander Zverev, to score his tenth Top Ten win of the year.
It was, by ranking, the best win of his career, and he became the first American since Roddick to have back-to-back seasons with 50 wins.
How wonderful. But there was a hitch.
A Sinner stood in his way. Jannik Sinner has been red-hot. Coming into today’s ATP Championships final, he had an astounding 69-6 record, and he’d won seven titles, including the Australian, Miami, Cincinnati, US and Shanghai championships. This week, in front of 15,000 adoring home-turf fans in Northern Italy, he breezed past four sometimes hapless foes en route to the final.
It’s simple: these days, in men’s tennis. ATP gentlemen prefer to play blondes, brunettes – anything but redheads.
For years, the Big 3 – Federer, Nadal and Djokovic – had dominated. But this year, after Sinner and Alcaraz split the four Slams, the conventional wisdom was clear: this was now the era of the Big 2, the Italian and the young Spaniard. But, truth be told, these days men’s tennis is more like the era of the Big One.
Sinner has been surging. The man has won more titles this year than he has dropped matches, hadn’t lost a set this week in Turin, and he’d only dropped his serve twice. In the semis, he dismissed the considerable Casper Ruud 6-1, 6-2, in 58 minutes.
The youngest man to ever win the Australian and US Opens in the same year had owned Fritz of late, beating him in straight sets in both the US Open final and last Tuesday.
Today, Fritz again unleashed his mighty serve and his huge forehand. He battled hard – he always does.
But the script didn’t change – we’ve seen this movie before. As at the US Open, in the seventh game of the first set, when the tennis balls were fluffy, Sinner used a delicate drop shot to break Taylor.
Simply put, today was another business-as-usual Italian master class. Sinner’s wicked, precise groundies stretched the American to the far corners of Turin’s massive court. His swift “big man” movement is a weapon. But it was Jannik’s serve that was sublime. He blasted 13 aces and held with astonishing ease. “Sinner right now is in a serving coma,” quipped Jim Courier.
With his 85-minute 6-4, 6-4 win, Jannik became the first Italian to ever win the ATP Championships, and he joined Federer and Djokovic as the only men to win all three of the big hardcourt tourneys in one year. Plus, he became the first champion to not drop a set in the entire tourney since Ivan Lendl in 1986, and he lost fewer games than any other ATP champ ever.
Of course, no player not named Federer is flawless. A hip injury, tendonitis and the flu have slowed him down. This year he missed the Italian Open and the Paris indoors. Brit Jack Draper said his only weakness is that he’s “too nice.” Jim Courier joked that Fritz ate more Chipotle than Sinner.
A gracious loser, Taylor told Jannik he’d had an “insane year, honestly.”
But what would be really insane is if this Gucci-loving, gentlemanly, appealing and dominant champ is banned for a year or two due to a miniscule amount of the banned substance Clostebol twice being found in his blood in March. Next month, we’ll find out if the World Anti-Doping Agency will overturn the ruling of the International Tennis Integrity Agency and knock the sport’s heavyweight champ out of the ring.
Now that, many say, would be a sin, after Sinner’s saintly year.
