"He's giving Novak too much credit": Taylor Fritz's own coach criticises him in mid-match interview during defeat to Novak Djokovic

America’s Taylor Fritz had another disappointing outing against Serbia’s Novak Djokovic. The 27-year-old suffered a defeat to the 24-time Grand Slam winner in the quarterfinal of the US Open with a score of 6-3, 7-5, 3-6, 6-4. It was Fritz’s consecutive 11th defeat to Djokovic across all competitions.

During the match, an interesting incident occurred that left many spectators surprised. Fritz’s coach, Michael Russel, spoke to ESPN during the match and criticised his own player for giving too much respect to Djokovic. Russel went on to call Fritz’s performance in a game in the second set ‘atrocious’ and stated that his performance was close to being a ‘donation’.

“The 5-5 game was atrocious,” said Russel. “A donation. That's why we sent him off court. He's giving Novak too much credit - just stay in the rally and find a forehand to go after. A lot of it is psychological, he has lost to him 10 times, but it's the US Open - get the crowd involved and just relax.”

Talking after the match, Fritz stated that his performance was much better than what the stats would show. Fritz also rued the missed chances and admitted that he did not manage to take the chances when he had them. Fritz also stated that losing the first two sets made his task an even more difficult one, something he did not manage to recover from throughout the match.

“I had so many more chances that you're not going to see on a stat line,” said Fritz while talking to the press after the match. “I was in points at Love-30, 15-30, 30-All. I was just playing these points just really poorly. When it comes down to the break points themselves, I'd say, out of the first 10, I would say five or six of them he played pretty well. Then maybe, like, four of them I just played a bad point or was too conservative or pulled the trigger at the wrong time. Just bad decision-making, because I wasn't playing as well as I would have wanted to. I just can't come out of those first two sets down two sets to love. Like, I need to play better. That's the thing that's frustrating. I don't need to play that much better to make it happen, because I had all the chances I had playing how I was playing, and I just need to serve a little bit better, too.”

Fritz also went on to praise Djokovic, stating that playing such flawless tennis and winning big points when it matters separates great players from the rest. “At the end of the day, that's one of the things that makes the great players great. They win the big points,” said Fritz. “That's something that I kind of touched on before the match is, I'm going to need to go out and take those points from him. He's not just going to hand them over to me. That's exactly what happened. A lot of my weapons, aggressive shots were just not there, letting me down.”

On the other hand, Djokovic highlighted what he did to disrupt the rhythm of Fritz. The 38-year-old stated that he tried to stay in the rallies and make him play. Djokovic also admitted that coming into the match, he was aware that letting Fritz play his own game will make it difficult for him. “Taylor is the kind of a player [that], if you allow him to play, he's going to try to dictate, he's going to be aggressive, stay close to the line,” said Djokovic. “He's going to take his forehands and punish you. I was just trying to survive, just trying to stay in the rally, make him play.”