Taylor Fritz: Inside the rise and spirit of American competition | ATP Tour

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Taylor Fritz: Inside the rise and spirit of American competition

Exclusive insight from physio Wolfgang Oswald

September 06, 2024

Taylor Fritz broke new ground on Tuesday when he beat Alexander Zverev for the second time in a row to reach the semi-finals of the US Open. The American had made the quarterfinals of the previous four Grand Slams, but never advanced to the last four. That changed with a good performance against the Nitto ATP Finals champion.

But according to Wolfgang Oswald, Fritz’s long-time physiotherapist, the 26-year-old is not content to move on.

“Before, maybe there was a sense of relief. ‘I made the second week, I made the quarter-final’,” said Oswald. “He actually said it in the car one day. He was like, ‘I’m not celebrating, because it’s not over yet. I’m not happy’.”

Fritz is fully focused on continuing his biggest run yet and trying to become the first American man to win a major singles title since Andy Roddick 21 years ago at Flushing Meadows.

ATPTour.com spoke with Oswald, who knows Fritz as well as anyone, to gain insight into the growth and mindset of the 2022 Nitto ATP Finals contender. The Australian first saw Fritz when he played Tommy Paul in the 2015 Roland Garros boys’ singles final, which Paul won. He then continued to follow the American as he progressed on the ATP Challenger Tour, including a set in the final break that Fritz played against Dustin Brown.

At the time, Oswald was a tennis fan working in Arizona. He got into tennis because Brett Waltz, the current physiotherapist of Frances Tiafoe, Fritz’s US Open semi-final opponent, thought it would be good to get a physio with a tennis background like Oswald on Tour.

One day, the Aussie received a call asking if he might be in Chengdu on Wednesday. Despite a fully booked schedule, Oswald managed things in a positive way and took a trip to work with Fritz later that week.

“I had never met Taylor. I had never met David Nainkin, his coach [at the time]… I rocked up at breakfast, and I met Taylor, and we went straight to the competition, and he was in the qualifiers, and he qualified. He entered the quarter-finals and that’s how it started,” said Oswald. “I had never spoken to him on the phone. I recently moved to Chengdu, China. It was supposed to be a three-week trip.”

It turned into a five-week journey as Fritz pushed to qualify for the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF. Oswald even entered an ATP Challenger Tour event in Vietnam during the trip.

“Taylor is bent over when he can’t. So I remember he was on his phone. He said, ‘Hello’. I talked to his coach for a long time when I got in the car, because his coach and I had many mutual friends. “The world of tennis is very small,” Oswald said. “There wasn’t much communication, I would say, because Taylor is very relaxed and quiet. But I remember he had his routine, I had a routine and we grew up together.”

After a stormy start to the tour because of how fast it went, the player-physio duo got to know each other better at the ATP Challenger Tour event in Ningbo, where Oswald had to take on a few more roles for the week. Naturally they spent a lot of time together.

“We went out to the mall to shop, we went out to dinner,” Oswald said. “And then we started communicating more, and we got along really well.”

It didn’t take long for Oswald to learn of Fritz’s competitive spirit.

“Well, the first game with him, we qualified in Chengdu, which is that I didn’t know him that way, because I didn’t get that from watching him on TV,” said Oswald. “[I saw] how you lie back, then flip the switch and fight tooth and nail to the end again [how he] he’s trying to figure out how to win… Right from the start, you realize he was a competitor.”

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^{Photo: Sarah Stier/Getty Images}
According to the physiotherapist, Fritz’s competitive nature has come out in many places, including playgrounds and batting cages in Tokyo in their second week together. It wasn’t just on the tennis court.

“Video games, very competitive. We play cards, very competitively. Chess, ultra competitive. “Any kind of social, competitive game,” Oswald said. “When we conduct trials in court, [even] if there is nothing you are riding on. ‘Hey you’ve got to do some aggressive bike sprints or push ups’, then you’ll be more competitive. So he is very competitive in almost anything he does.

“I have seen him very hot in the morning. In fact, he was really into FIFA. Now he plays other games, but he was playing a FIFA video, and I remember him beating a professional FIFA player who we thought was a professional based on his name. I remember him being very competitive, maybe even breaking a few controls in his video game, because he was competitive, really fired up when he lost. “

But Fritz is not always in that mode. In fact, he is more reserved than many of his colleagues off the court.

“She’s quiet and steady and very soft outside of that [when he is on] the court. His heart rate doesn’t even go up one beat a minute if we’re late for the flight. He’s cool, calm and collected,” Oswald said. “And in the game, if you watch him play, he fights tooth and nail until the end. But I think being calm most of the time helps the mental energy if you have to turn it on. You can open it. If you’re always frustrated, then you have to grow more with the game, sometimes that can be very mentally draining.”

That mindset helped Fritz rise to No. 5 in the PIF ATP Rankings and explore various stepping stones on his journey. World No. 12 won at least one title in the ATP 250s, ATP 500s and ATP Masters 1000s.

“Since I’m part of the Slam and I’ve been close to the semis several times in five sets, this is the next step. Now he has been in that situation, he knows how to deal with it,” said Oswald. “One of the themes over the last few days hasn’t been, ‘Hey, we’re glad we’re in the games, let’s celebrate’. The work is not finished, let’s go through this whole thing.”

Oswald has watched his charge grow in several ways over the past seven years, from physical development to maturity and more. And now, Fritz has used that to move within a game of becoming the first American man to win at the top level since Roddick at Wimbledon in 2009. Only longtime friend Tiafoe stands in his way.

“Frances and they pushed each other. “The amount of training increased when Frances hit 30 for the first time in the world, then she passed Fritz, Frances got better,” said Oswald. “They kept pushing each other. Even though they’re good friends, nobody wants to lose another boy, I can tell you that.”