Taylor Fritz earned a thrilling two-sets-to-none comeback victory against Alexander Zverev on Monday in the Wimbledon fourth round. It was the third time he has rallied from two sets down and now he will face 25th seed Lorenzo Musetti for a place in the semi-finals.
ATPTour.com caught up with Fritz's coach, Michael Russell, who detailed his charge's comeback, what the American has learned from his previous major quarter-finals, facing Musetti and more.
You've coached Taylor in a lot of big matches. How would you describe how he was able to make that comeback?
His composure and collectiveness in the pressure moments and being down two sets to love was so perfect. It really was. He didn't panic. He was playing excellent from the ground. Sascha was just having one of those service days where he was serving 80 per cent first serve, he's averaging 133 miles an hour on the first and 111 on the second and hitting spots. So you look over at the scoreboard, you're down two sets to love, but you're playing well.
He played maybe a little tentative in the second-set tie-break. But in this sport, especially on grass, it's the smallest of margins that can turn a match around, and Taylor did a great job of just staying in it and focusing on his service games, making sure he takes care of his service games and then kept putting the pressure on on Sascha. He was able to gut out a break in the third and the whole match just completely changes because now it's two sets to one and you're in for a dog fight.
How big of a sign was the double fault at 4-4 in the third set?
He hadn't really double-faulted very much. So as soon as you see that, you think of the psychological factor, he's feeling a little bit of pressure getting into the deeper end of the match. And that's a big confidence booster for Taylor, because he sees that as well, because for two sets, the guy was infallible.
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