MUBADALA DC OPEN

July 25, 2026

Taylor Fritz

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Taylor, welcome back to D.C. We're past the halfway point of the season. How would you assess your year so far?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I would say, I mean, it's going all right recently. I think obviously I took the time off, and I had a good grass court season, which I really needed to kind of put myself back in a decent spot in the race.

I still think it's not -- you know, it hasn't been, like, the best, but I think if I play the level that I know I, I guess, or I think I should be playing for the rest of the year, I have a lot of tournaments that I like for the rest of the year, and I think I'm in a decent place to still have a strong finish for the year.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. I interviewed Andre Agassi recently, and he described you as the first sociopath that's ever played tennis because of what he called your impressive short-term memory loss. He was saying that if something bad happens, you move on quickly; if something good happens, you move on quickly. I'm curious what you make of that assessment?

TAYLOR FRITZ: I'd say that's a huge compliment coming from him. Yeah, I don't really let things bother me, especially when I'm on the court. I try to stay very in the moment. Yeah, if something happens, something bad happens, I'll get upset about it for a second, but then I'll just move on.

I try not to just let things affect me when I'm on the court. Especially when I'm playing well, I feel like I'm very, you know, give it a second and then on to the next point.

Q. How exactly do you do that? Do you have any tips?

TAYLOR FRITZ: No, I mean, for me I think sometimes when something -- I do something bad, I just kind of tell myself, like, that was really bad. I'll get upset for a second. Sometimes it's a misconception. People think when you get upset, that it can affect the next points. I just need to get it out of my system and be, like, that was awful, let's move on.

Q. With everything you've gone through with your knee, I know you've made the best decisions that you thought at the time, but looking back, is there anything that you wish that you had done differently to manage that?

TAYLOR FRITZ: No. Honestly, no. I'd say the only thing would be way earlier on, like 2025 Australia when I first started feeling like the signs of the tendinitis, maybe just from that moment on got more just on, like, I guess the rehab work and the protocol.

I think I let it get too bad before I fully started doing all of the stuff I needed to do to strengthen the tendon and deal with tendinitis. Part of that is because when I was partially into it, I felt like when I would do the protocol, it would actually make it worse, and it would irritate it more for my matches, so I felt like I was just trying to play through.

I played well the whole majority second half of the 2025 season, but yeah, if I could go back, I think from the beginning of 2025 I would just start doing all of the tendinitis protocol stuff that I do now, and I probably could have prevented it from getting really, really bad.

Q. I'm working on a story sort of explaining issues guys have had with the ball quality over the last few years, complaints about that, the quality of balls. Just curious for you how you would sort of trace when that issue started, how it sort of evolved, and what the state of it is now?

TAYLOR FRITZ: It's tough for me to say when I think it really started, because I'm not sure if I just, after playing for so long, became much more perceptive to all the little differences, because I notice all those little things more than I did when I was younger. It's like that with anything you do a lot. You start to notice more details the more you've done it.

So it's tough to say if that's the reason why I noticed, but I'd say after we came back from COVID, and I think that's what a lot of players think, like, the quality went down after COVID.

But it changes with the brand of balls. I think some brands stay more consistent. Some brands, I think they say it's the same ball, but from week to week, even though it's labeled the same, it feels, like, really different. It's tough to really pinpoint it.

Q. When you're home practicing and you open a new can or a case of balls, are you sometimes surprised by the quality of it that you don't know what you're going to get?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yes, it happens a lot. The one thing I will -- there's the Dunlop ATP balls. Getting those from the store or getting them online, not through the ATP, those are absolutely nothing even close to what we're playing with on tour.

If I look at the can and it has a paper top to the can, instantly I know that it's not the ball. Even though it says it's the ball, it's not.

Same happened with the Wilson US Open balls. Ethan's coach last week brought a case. We brought a case that had the same label on the back. We hit with both batches. They were not even, like, remotely close to the same ball even though they were meant to be.

Yeah, it happens. It happens a lot, and it's frustrating, because I like to -- what's the point of practicing for a tournament? Like last week I'm getting ready to come here. What's the point of practicing if the ball that I'm practicing with is going to be completely different to the one here? I might as well come here a week early if that's the case.

It's frustrating, for sure. It didn't used to always be like that.

Q. Just with the knee, at Wimbledon you said it was part of what kind of knocked you off so much was that it was surprising that you had been playing and it didn't (indiscernible). Just having that experience and now knowing that that is how it can happen, does that help in the future? How does that affect your mind? That would be such a weird thing to play with.

TAYLOR FRITZ: I kind of always knew that was, like, a possibility. There is a chance that I play a certain amount of matches, and that happens again.

Tendinitis, like healing from it, like recovery, it's not always just linear, and pain doesn't necessarily mean that I'm making it worse or I'm making it bad. It's expected to have pain sometimes.

In the protocol for rehabbing it, you're actually supposed to have a little bit of pain. It's just at a threshold. It's going to take time while I continue to rebuild and strengthen the tendon. I literally had a hole in it in December, and now it takes time to strengthen the tissue that I've been able to regrow in that spot.

At the end of the day, if I can play the whole grass court season, get to the quarters of a slam and it hurts, then that's better than me not playing at all. I'm going to continue to do that and strengthen the tendon.

At some point it will get strong enough to where I can play all-out all the time, and I won't have to deal with any more pain.

But it is one of those things that takes time. At this point playing isn't something that's making a difference in my progression.

Q. I also wanted to ask about just Jannik and Novak pulling out of Canada and the tournament organizers there saying that they need to talk to the ATP and kind of figure something out. One, does it mean anything to you guys who kind of have been beating that drum of something is not working here with the Masters schedule? I also wonder, has how players view the Masters changed at all since they've gone to this extended schedule just in terms of prestige or how much you guys want to play them at all?

TAYLOR FRITZ: Again, I don't know if I think this because I kind of -- my ranking kind of got higher, I started going deeper in tournaments a bit more often right around the time we changed the Masters schedule. I don't know if it's because of that, but it feels like I'm playing more matches. It feels like the season got longer to me. It just feels like you're at these tournaments for so long.

Yeah, I think the thing is, if it's replaced by -- if it were to go back to one week and it gets replaced by another tournament just getting put in the spot, then I don't really see the benefit of it, because obviously when you have these two-week Masters, the tournaments are going to make a lot more money.

At the end of the day, it is a business. So if they're making more money doing it, then it makes sense. But I think we need to also accommodate the players. For the top guys, it's a long time to be on the road and be playing when you're committing to playing, you know, extended Master, extended Master, week, US Open. It's a lot.

It's tough to say, for sure. Before it happened, I thought it seemed like an all right idea to me, but now that we're doing it, yeah, it feels, like, really long.

Q. (Off microphone).

TAYLOR FRITZ: I don't think anyone cares about them less, no. I think it's the same importance.

I think some of the top players just not playing, it's because of how long they would just be here. What they care about is New York. I think it was easier to play as a top player to go when it was just a week, a week, and that's it.

Q. Frances was in here a little while ago, and he was saying how this tournament gets better and better every year, and he highlighted the depth of the field this year, especially with the draw size being decreased. I wanted to get your thoughts on that and the collective field in this year's tournament.

TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I think it's always a strong event. It's the first week kind of of the US Open series to play on hard court. It's the only 500 event obviously this week. Then, of course, yeah, you take out the big draw, and you make it into a 30, 32, I believe, the cut gets tough.

Yeah, it just turns into a really strong tournament, as I feel like most of these 500s that have smaller draws do. Like I said, it's in a pretty prime week of the year for the players that want to play on hard court and kind of get the US Open series started.