"It's incredibly slow": Taylor Fritz criticises playing conditions at Shanghai Masters despite second-round win

America’s Taylor Fritz has complained about the slowness of the surface at the Shanghai Masters. The ATP 1000 event started on Wednesday which features some of the best men’s player currently playing the game.

The fifth-seed player in the competition is America’s Fritz, who started his campaign on a winning note in a tough contest against Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan. The final score of the match, which lasted nearly two and a half hours, was 2-6, 7-6, 7-6.

Talking after the match, Fritz complained about the slowness of the surface and highlighted that it was not as fast as it was last year. Fritz was of the opinion that such a change is not good for the competition and highlighted that he felt like the balls were not going anywhere.

"It's incredibly slow,” said Fritz. “If I'm honest, it's a very bad change. Last year, the courts were fast according to the speed index but the balls were very slow. I thought the tournament was played at a slightly slower pace, but it was okay. It wasn't as slow as this. They've slowed down the courts. The balls might not be as slow, but they're still a bit slow. You play three balls after the ball change, they become huge and you can't do anything with them. Not to mention the humidity that slows down the courts too. You feel like the ball is going nowhere."

The win was an important one for Fritz, especially after his impressive run in his last event, which was the Japan Open, where he finished as the runner-up after losing to world number one Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz in the final in straight sets with a score of 6-4, 6-4. The victory was also an important one for Fritz, as he is still in the race to cement his spot in the ATP Finals.

Currently, Fritz is ranked fourth in the ATP Rankings with 4,695 points. If he manages to go all the way, his rating points tally will increase to 5,595, which will put him in a commanding position in the race to feature at the ATP Finals. Speaking about how he managed to overcome a poor start, Fritz stated that he just kept motivating himself. Fritz also admitted that it was tough doing that, considering not much was going his way.

“I just tried to keep myself motivated throughout the match,” said Fritz during his on-court interview. “A lot of things were just not going my way. I wasn’t winning any of my break point opportunities. He was capitalising on his. I felt like in the game I got broken in the first, like the lines here are just like the skinniest lines ever. He hit two balls on the baseline. There’s not much I can do about it. When you’ve been on such a long stretch, it’s easy to kind of just get down and be like, ‘ah, you know, it’s just not my day-to-day, go home,’ and I just had to keep motivating myself to compete and just stay with him. I was able to play my way and serve my way out of those 0-30s and take it in breakers.”

Fritz’s next round opponent will be France’s Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard. The 22-year-old cemented his spot in the third round of the mega-event after beating Italy’s Luca Nardi in straight sets with a score of 6-3, 7-6. It will be the second meeting between the two players in professional tennis. In the only previous meeting, which came in the first round of Wimbledon earlier this year, it was Fritz who came out on top in a hard-fought five-set contest with a score of 6-7, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 6-4.