AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 26, 2026

Taylor Fritz

Press Conference

L. MUSETTI/T. Fritz

6-2, 7-5, 6-4

THE MODERATOR: We'll go straight to questions.

Q. Taylor, you were talking pre-match about how things were not holding up for you physically. How were you in this match? I saw the huge amount of tape that you had on your torso. How are you feeling?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, not good. I've been pretty, like, I guess, transparent about the knee stuff, like, the entire week. I was so happy with how I was feeling throughout, like, the first two rounds, and then I came in after the match with Stan and I was, like, yeah, it wasn't feeling great against Stan, especially towards the end of the match.

Today I was feeling it from the get-go. I felt good in my warmup this morning. Then when I went to do my pre-match stuff, like moving around and stuff before the match, I just I told my physio, I was like, My knee just doesn't feel great.

I was hoping it would loosen up. I mean, it didn't get worse. I don't really think it got worse, but it kind of just stayed the same the entire match. It was just, like, pretty much everything was bothering it.

Q. You said before the tournament and in previous rounds that you might talk about the other stuff you were feeling.

TAYLOR FRITZ: It was my oblique. That was all the tape. We tried taping it today because I felt like in the first round it wasn't that big of an issue. In the second round maybe a little bit more.

Then in the match with Stan my oblique was actually killing me when I was trying to return. He'd like kick his second serve to my backhand. I was just, like, I could not hit it without... Like, I could only push it if I tried to, like, turn on it. It was killing me.

Tried to tape it. Yeah, before the tournament I did an ultrasound. After the second round I did an ultrasound. Yesterday I did an MRI on it. It's the exact same thing I had last year that took me out for the beginning of clay court season and a bit during the hard court season I tried to play through.

All the scans show that there's not like an obvious tear there like there was before. But you know, I'm being cautious, because it's all the same symptoms, you know, same shots hurt me.

It's exactly the same as last year, and I kind of made a mess of this thing last year trying to play through it a bit too much. So we're monitoring it.

But you know, I don't think it's as bad as it was last year, so I think I can recover from it fairly, fairly quickly if I just take some time off.

Q. I know hindsight is 20/20, but did you do a different sort of off-season this year, taking into account how you had to fight through injury last year? Obviously Carlos and Jannik are at a different level than pretty much everyone else, but they come in here, you know, they don't start with the United Cup, is it a situation where, like, maybe you should just take more time off? I know you play a lot.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, it's tough. I would hate to... For me, I would hate to just go into Australian Open with zero matches. That's just me.

I also like to train the week before, so I think just showing up a week later and playing like the 250 the week before is not the best answer either.

So I think it's always worked well for me. And I've felt very good coming in the last couple of years having played United Cup.

I don't know. Yeah, when I think of just how off, like, kind of rusty I felt in my first match of the year at United Cup, like, I would hate to show up to a slam and potentially do that. I think for me it's too big of a risk.

But maybe for those guys, they feel very confident that they're not going to go out and, you know, they're going to be able to play themselves into the tournament.

Q. The off-season itself, more downtime potentially? A little less training?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, no, there wasn't enough training in the off-season. But there's nothing I can do. I'm rehabbing a knee injury. Even if today, like...

Let's put it this way: even if today the knee didn't get me, it would have been very hard for me to play that, like, a long five-setter in the heat today.

It's not a situation of, like, I'm being too lazy, I need to work harder. I just physically have not been able to. That was the issue. I spent the off-season just full rehabbing and doing my gym work. I just didn't get enough time on the court.

There's nothing else I can really do. That's all I could do.

Q. How much do you have to rest against coming forward? I know you love so much of this calendar: Dallas, Indian Wells, Miami. You talked earlier about playing through it, but it seems like you have to, on some level, be forcing yourself to get off the treadmill at some point.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I think I'm going to just see how the oblique stuff reacts, because I think it felt pretty good. It felt pretty good today.

But at the same time, he wasn't really kicking to my back. He wasn't really making me play, like, the shots that sometimes bother it.

I don't know. I don't know how good it really is, but I'm going to see how that reacts. I'm hoping I can play Dallas, I think. I don't know why my knee got so much worse kind of in the last, like, three days. Like I said, it was feeling really good through my first two rounds and all the practices before that.

I don't know if it's just the overload of playing, you know, like physical three, four sets, stuff like that. But you know, I have some more time to heal it. I feel like I keep up with the rehab, it's going to keep getting better.

I'm not going to have to play more than three sets any match in Dallas, so kind of just figure it out. If my knee feels like it's not getting better, if my oblique feels like it's not getting better, I'll give myself the time.

Q. With what you said about your condition, did you consider retiring from the match today and what went into your decision not to?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah. I mean, the thing is, like, before the match it didn't cross my mind at all, because like I said, I felt pretty good in my warmup. I felt very good in my warmup.

Part of me hoped it would maybe, like, loosen up. I took those -- they gave me -- I'm already on anti-inflammatories, but then they gave me other painkillers. I thought that would maybe, like, kick in. It didn't do anything.

But I just felt like I was striking the ball well. I think a lot of my mistakes just came from, you know, me pulling up, not feeling like I'm loading my knee hard enough.

I really don't also want to take any credit away. He was playing really well, serving really well, neutralizing when I was attacking extremely well. He played great.

I don't know. I thought in the second set I could get something going, to be honest. I felt like I had some opportunities that I maybe could have broken. Then maybe I, like, get some holds and take the second set.

My biggest problem today was just, like, sometimes when I'm playing through an injury, most of the time when I'm playing through an injury, I can just go on the court and just not think about it and just, like, play and get into the match. I just could not today.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was really hard for me to get in there. But I don't know, I'm not the kind of person that pulls out. Especially in the second set, I was just really hoping I could get something going.

Q. I just wondered if you can remember the last time you felt you had a sustained period without kind of a niggle or an injury sort of in the back of your mind?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Well, I've had the knee tendinitis, I've been feeling it on court, like, since last grass court season.

Q. The most recent one?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah. But I do feel like when I was playing during US Open, Laver Cup, and Tokyo, I feel like I wasn't even thinking about it when I was playing on the court.

I would say that was the last stretch of, like, three tournaments where I think I was going on the court and playing, and there was, like, nothing was in my mind about an injury while I was playing.

Q. Can you see therefore a time in the not too distant future when you will get to that feeling again, or does it feel hard to imagine?

TAYLOR FRITZ: No, I mean, that's the goal. It's tough, because things just pop up now all the time. But you know, my knee still is improving. Like I said in press after my first and second round, it's going to be a process.

It was feeling better. I'm still not 100% sure why I kind of went backwards the last, like, three or four days after two weeks of it, three weeks of it just consistently getting better.

I've talked to a lot of people that have had this, and they say I'll make a full recovery at some point. Then I've recovered from the oblique thing before. It's not too serious.

My main, main focus is to just get 100% healthy, which I'm hoping it's not too far away, and just to be on top of everything so I can train and, like, really just practice and train like I am used to.

Q. We've seen a couple of players recently - Jack Draper, Arthur Fils - that have taken basically six, seven months off because they've not been able to play, and they're trying to get to the point that you all want to be in of not feeling pain. With the medical advice you've had, would there be any sense or possibility in the future that you might just say, Do you know what, I'm just not going to play until this is sorted out?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I think that going into the year, that was kind of how I was thinking, and that's kind of how I was talking with my team, because you know, I guess what I have with my knee, it's not something no one has dealt with before. The protocol to fix, the time, you know, there's very obvious standards for it.

How it was feeling when I first got to Australia, I was telling my team and I was saying, Look, if it stays how it is, we are just going to have to stop, because I don't think it's getting any better. I can't play through this.

So I was fully ready to shut it down for a couple of months to get it better, but you know, my physio, who is great and I trust him, he said that, you know, he thinks there's a pretty solid chance that we can do all the rehab protocol and do everything we need to do while I'm still playing. I can rest when I have rests between the tournaments, maybe not play as many tournaments. You know, he thinks that it's plausible to get it better while playing. So we said let's try that and see how it goes.

You know, like I said, up until three days ago, I thought it was going pretty well. So I think that's still the plan moving forward.