PARIS — Coco Gauff hit the serve over her crouched teammate, Taylor Fritz, and right as he stood up to join the point, the ripped return off the racket of Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski came zipping toward his head.
Fritz reacted, stabbing his racket upward to protect his face, and the ball caromed off at a perfect angle for a winner out wide to secure a hold that milliseconds earlier had looked lost. In disbelief, Dabrowski waved her hands in the air at the unlikely shot.
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Maybe Fritz deserved the lucky break. After all, he’d been at it for almost nine hours by that point.
On Wednesday, the top American at the Olympics ran a tennis triathlon at Roland Garros, playing three matches — one each in singles, doubles and mixed doubles — in the span of just over nine hours under a combination of searing sun and stifling humidity.
“It’s fine, I’m ready for it,” Fritz said after the first of those matches, a 6-4, 7-5 loss to Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in the men’s singles that started just after 1 p.m. in Paris. “I can get excited for these type of things.”
Fritz couldn’t remember the last time he had a day like this. But it’s been a while. Maybe back in his early junior days.
“When the level of matches being played were a lot different,” he said, “so it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary (to play three matches in a day).”
It’s common for professional tennis players to play twice on the same day when entered in multiple events in the same tournament. Three is rare. But a one-week tournament with 128 singles players and 80 doubles teams across the genders is already a tight squeeze, and then rain washed out all but 10 matches on the covered stadium courts on the tournament’s opening day.
How does Taylor Fritz feel after his marathon day? “I’m just ready to wake up tomorrow and play more tennis,” he said. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
That bumped everything back, and tennis at the Paris Games is still playing catchup. Men’s doubles was supposed to have its semifinals on Wednesday. Instead, Fritz and fellow American Tommy Paul’s afternoon matchup against the Dutch team of Robin Haase and Jean-Julien Rojer was only a round-of-16 affair.
A rain shower delayed play across the grounds for 30 minutes shortly before that match, but once they were on court, Fritz and Paul breezed past their Dutch foes, 6-3, 6-4 in one hour, 11 minutes. The match ended at 6:25 p.m. and set up a marquee-grabbing quarterfinal against Britain’s Dan Evans and Andy Murray, who is retiring after this tournament.
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Afterward, a journalist commented to Paul that he’d had a busy day after also playing singles earlier.
“Not as busy as Fritzy,” Paul replied.
Paul said he was probably 13 years old the last time he played three matches in one day, but the Olympic tournament lends itself to this kind of scheduling quirk, with more players opting to enter multiple events.
“You come into the event knowing it’s going to be a very different event,” Paul said. “Whatever normal routines you have, you kind of throw out the window. Maybe you’re staying and watching a teammate, or maybe you have to play three matches in one day. It’s just different, but it’s a very fun event.”
Fritz said he woke up about 8:45 a.m. after getting to sleep around 1 a.m. He had his usual physio treatment and warmup, played his singles match, then spent the time in between matches trying to eat and hydrate in the drenching heat. He went through “probably like 10” shirts.
Taylor Fritz's long day at Roland Garros
| Time (in Paris) | Event |
|---|---|
1:03 p.m. | Steps onto Court 14 for his singles match |
2:34 p.m. | Singles match ends |
4:12 p.m. | Rain delay during match before his doubles match |
4:42 p.m. | Rain delay ends |
5:06 p.m. | Back onto Court 14 for men's doubles match |
6:25 p.m. | Men's doubles match ends |
8:07 p.m. | Mixed doubles match begins on Court Simonne-Mathieu |
10:13 p.m. | Mixed doubles match ends |
He even said he had the option to pull out of his partnership with Gauff, if he wanted to avoid playing three matches in one day, with the option of another American player subbing in his place.
“I said, ‘No chance,'” Fritz said. “I thought mixed was where I felt the most confidence going deep.”
It was 8:07 p.m. when Fritz and Gauff took to Court Simonne-Mathieu — a 2019 addition that sits off the main Roland Garros property, on the opposite end of the complex from Court 14, which requires walking through a 19th-century garden full of tropical plants to access. So at least Fritz got a nice view while walking the extra steps.
Gauff and Fritz lost the first set in a tiebreak and were at 3-3 in the second when the Canadian team of Dabrowski and Felix Auger-Aliassime went up 15-40. But the Americans won three straight points, and then came Fritz’s face-protecting winner to seal the hold. The Americans then broke serve and held to force a match tiebreak, which the Canadians won, 10-8, on Auger-Aliassime’s clinching winner at 10:13 p.m.
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And so ended an unusual day for Fritz: three matches; one win, two losses; four hours, 34 minutes of play; and nine hours, 10 minutes from first walking on court in the afternoon to shaking hands at the end of it all.
How does he feel after all that?
“I’m just ready to wake up tomorrow and play more tennis,” he said.
(Top photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
Zack Pierce is the national managing editor for The Athletic. Before that, he was the managing editor for The Athletic's Minnesota coverage. He spent over 10 years in various editorial capacities at FoxSports.com after a brief stint at ESPN.com. A Minnesota native, he co-founded the Trent Tucker Fan Club and refused to interact with society for several hours after the 1998 NFC Championship Game.
