Taylor Fritz is in the form of his life and he demonstrated such confidence on Saturday at the St. Petersburg Open, downing Jan-Lennard Struff 5-7, 6-1, 6-3 to reach his first tour-level final of the season.
“I played pretty well for a lot of parts in the first set but a couple of things didn’t go my way. I went up a break but then didn’t have the best service game and got broken back,” Fritz said in his on-court interview. “I had another chance to break and then got broken from 40/15 up. I recovered and brought it together and played a really solid second and third set.”
The American defeated World No. 4 Alexander Zverev en route to his first ATP Masters 1000 semi-final earlier in October and has backed up that run in St. Petersburg, dropping just one set at the ATP 250 event.
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Fritz was strong on serve against Struff, winning 81 per cent (44/54) of points behind his first delivery as he rallied from a set down to advance after one hour and 58 minutes and level their ATP Head2Head series at 1-1.
“It is amazing to have people cheering for me when I am so far away from home. I love all of the support,” Fritz added.
The fifth seed celebrated his 24th birthday on Thursday and will face qualifier Botic van de Zandschulp or Croatian Marin Cilic in the championship match.