UNITED CUP

January 4, 2026

Taylor Fritz

Team USA

Flash Quote

S. BAEZ/T. Fritz

4-6, 7-5, 6-4

Team USA - 1

Team Argentina - 1

Q. Just your thoughts on the match, Taylor?

TAYLOR FRITZ: It's not the way I want to start off the year. There's definitely a lot of rust showing.

I feel like he raised his level, especially in the third set, but also at times in the second set. I think the first set just from both of us wasn't a super high level. You know, both of us making a lot of errors.

Ultimately in the end in the first set I won it because I put balls in the court, and he made mistakes. He started mentally cutting down on the mistakes, being very steady, but also dictating and being able to attack.

For me, the ball just felt like it was really flying on me. I didn't feel like I had the control I wanted when I was trying to be offensive.

Yeah, I couldn't really do the things I wanted out there. Then I just had a couple of games where I served very poorly. He played solid.

I was struggling to beat him from the back. He was beating me from the back a lot. The bad serving games really cost me.

Q. Lastly, you have the off-season behind you now and first match of 2026. Do you have things in mind that you want to work on ahead of the Australian Open and the rest of the year?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, I really just need to be playing points and be healthy. I think that's the biggest thing. I spent the majority -- pretty much the entirety of the off-season trying to rehab my knee tendinopathy, but that's a thing that takes months and months to get better.

You know, I didn't get to play a lot of points because I'm trying to not push it too hard. So it's just going to be a struggle of trying to get the reps in and get the points and matches in to start feeling like I'm comfortable while juggling that while still managing my knee pain because I'm going to try to play through and keep doing the rehab while traveling and getting better, but if that doesn't work in a couple of months, then I am just going to have to full stop and fix it.