It is the end of the road for Taylor Fritz at the 2025 French Open. Although not his favored surface, Fritz was expected to dig deep in the tournament. However, just like his compatriot, Emma Navarro, the American star suffered a shocking loss against Daniel Altmaier in the opening round. In a match lasting 2 hours and 41 minutes on Court Simonne-Mathieu, Fritz’s hopes of winning his maiden French Open title went up in smoke with a shocking defeat. Even as the tennis world tried to reason out Fritz’s disappointing defeat, the American star failed to find any answers for it.
Entering the tournament ranked 4th, Fritz was labeled as a dark horse by many tennis pundits to win the tournament. Even fellow American star Jessica Pegula picked Fritz to have an outside chance to emerge triumphant. However, their predictions went all wrong, as Fritz had no answers on Court Simonne-Mathieu, falling 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 today against Altmaier. His ranking will also take a hit with this result, after his first first round exit since the 2022 US Open.
After the match, the US Open runner up sat down to analyze his defeat but was left puzzled as he had no idea what went wrong. Talking about it, Fritz revealed, “My movement on court is really bad. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not feeling that bad physically. I rolled my ankle in Geneva, it doesn’t feel great but it’s not the reason I lost today.”
Fritz.
“My movement on court is really bad. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not feeling that bad physically. I rolled by ankle in Geneva, it doesn’t feel great but it’s not the reason I lost today”.
— José Morgado (@josemorgado) May 26, 2025
Ahead of the French Open, Fritz received a major scare while playing in Geneva. During his match against Hubert Hurkacz, he rolled his ankle and was seen in pain. Nonetheless, he continued that match and went down fighting in straight sets 6-3, 7-6 (5) in the last-eight battle. But ultimately, it wasn’t the ankle holding him back in Paris. “It’s kind of what’s been going on a bit lately,” said Fritz. “I think I’m playing generally fine. It’s just a lot of important points, I just am like playing horrendous tennis on a lot of the important points…”
Even as Fritz was left clueless about his loss, there were contrasting emotions in Altmaier’s camp. Expressing his happiness after defeating Fritz, Altmaier said, “It was very special. I think I was working really hard the past weeks to get confidence, preparing myself for those kinds of matches. I feel like I’m ready to play whoever is going to face me. I’m really happy to get this first win and I really love my performance.”
Despite struggling for form, Fritz is leading the charge when it comes to a major change in men’s and women’s tennis. Before the French Open, he made his stance clear on this subject.
Taylor Fritz calls out the ATP and the WTA Tour
Revenue sharing has often been a widely debated topic. Some of the top players, including Taylor Fritz, want a better share of the revenue between the players and the tournament. Even as the American star has been having a poor run lately, he took the lead and spoke about the shared revenues.
Fritz said, “I think the revenue percentage is off. It’s not about the outright number we are getting paid because slams are obviously our biggest pay day and the most we are getting paid but in terms of the players making the tournament happen and the percentage of revenue coming back to the players is very low for tennis and extremely low in comparison to other sports.”
Following the early defeat, Fritz will have to go back to the drawing board to assess his performance. Can he come back strongly in the upcoming tournaments? Let us know your views in the comments below.
The post Taylor Fritz Left Puzzled After French Open Dreams Crumble in Round 1 appeared first on EssentiallySports.