Taylor Fritz went up against Carlos Alcaraz for the first time in his career during quarterfinal action at the Miami Open on Thursday night. It didn’t go well for the American, who got broken early in each set and lost 6-4, 6-2 in one hour and 18 minutes.
Unsurprisingly, Fritz had high praise for Alcaraz following the match.
“It’s not even what I saw today,” the world No. 10 said when asked what it was like to play against the top-ranked Spaniard. “It’s what I have seen for a while now. I said it a year ago when I watched him play, for how young he is, he just has all the tools. He can come to net, he can dropshot you, he can lob you, he’s incredibly fast, he has all the power, his forehand is good, his backhand is good.
“You know, it’s very rare to see someone so young so developed in their game and not really have anything that they need to work on so much. He has tons of different ways to play, and he can incorporate tons of different game-plans to play different players because he has so many tools to win a match. I think that’s something that I wouldn’t say any of [the Big 3–Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer] had at such a young age.
“Also, just speaking of the match today, I did feel the level of the first three games was absolutely unbearable. He was hitting clean winners off of 110-mile-an-hour second serves I was hitting into his body. I’m stepping up and crushing backhands [cross-court], and he’s going open-stance backhand (down the) line winners off of that.
“That wasn’t the level for the rest of the match. I was able to settle in much more, and he wasn’t doing that the whole match. But he obviously possesses that level, and for those first couple of games it was pretty overwhelming.
“I definitely felt like I had more breathing room against [the Big 3] than in this match. I think that it’s different game styles. Novak will have these long rallies, but he’ll kind of slowly get you out of position and overwhelm me. I still feel like I can hang in these rallies for a long time and get more chances to attack.
“I think that I’d go back to the first couple games of the match. He just hit winners and shots that hurt me off of a lot of shots that people normally aren’t hurting me off of.”
Alcaraz will face a much more familiar foe in Friday’s semifinals: Jannik Sinner.
They have already squared off six times, with the 19-year-old leading the head-to-head series 4-2 (3-2 at the ATP level). Alcaraz and Sinner also just met in the Indian Wells semis, where the No. 1 seed and eventual champion prevailed 7-6(4), 6-3.
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