Un debut nada tranquilo para Taylor Fritz en el Masters 1000 de Cincinnati ante su compatriota Alex Michelsen.
Aunque el marcador final, 6-3 y 6-4, podría indicar lo contrario, el cabeza de serie número 6 vivió varios momentos de tensión sobre la pista, especialmente durante los primeros compases del partido.
El jugador de San Diego, de hecho, lanzó su raqueta al suelo y la destrozó al final del primer juego, que perdió con su servicio. En la entrevista a pie de pista con los micrófonos del ATP Tour, emitida en los canales de Tennis TV, el estadounidense explicó el motivo: "If I can't serve, my serve stops being one of my best weapons. I came out on the side where the wind was helping me, I clearly should have held the serve, and I only scored a first, on which he responded with a winner. Then I double-faulted and had to play the rest of the points with the second one. It frustrated me a lot and it all blew up in the first game," reveló.
Fritz reaccionó bien
Sin embargo, aquella explosión de ira terminó beneficiando a Fritz, que de inmediato fue capaz de corregir los errores cometidos: "Sometimes you just have to explode and let off steam, this helped me to move forward. I think that, if I had tried to keep everything inside, maybe I wouldn't have been able to turn the situation around so quickly".
Para el estadounidense, en este torneo de Ohio hay un rival que todos deben tener en cuenta: el viento. "At times it was very strong, and it wasn't a constant wind that you could adapt to. There were bursts, so sometimes you didn't know how much he would deflect the ball. Sometimes I just hit her and she came out, other times I hit her hard and she didn't come out the same way. It was really hard to serve. I think this was reflected in the service statistics of both during the first set.
Towards the end the conditions were much more manageable, which was good. Once I got the break lead in the second, I really wanted the wind to calm down so I could just focus on holding the serve. It was a very tough match," concluyó Fritz.