Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul have made U.S. men’s tennis a force again ... but what's next?
Will that be the extent of their legacy, or is there more to come? 2024 will be an important year in their story.
“It’s always something,” Taylor Fritz said with a smile after his win over Alejandro Tabilo at Indian Wells on Saturday.
The California native and 2022 BNP Paribas champion wasn’t talking about his match, or his team, or his girlfriend, or his family. He was referring instead to a less formal, but no less important, part of his daily routine: Having a laugh about something, anything, with his fellow American Frances Tiafoe.
“Literally just before I came here, [I was] messing around with Frances in the locker room, you know, joking about something,” Fritz said.
“It’s good to kind of break it up, and keep me, all of us, entertained.”
By “all of us” he means the U.S. men who came up together in the juniors a decade ago, and who have entrenched themselves in the ATP’s Top 20. Fritz is currently ranked 12th, Tommy Paul 17th, and Tiafoe 18th. Two years ago, their friend Reilly Opelka was alongside them. With Opelka on an extended injury break, his place has been taken by 21-year-old Ben Shelton.
In 2015, this generation inspired a wave of “future of American tennis” headlines when they combined for a single-nation junior triple crown at the Grand Slams. Paul won the boys’ title at Roland Garros, Opelka won at Wimbledon, and Fritz won at the US Open. Unlike some U.S. men’s generations of the past, these guys were friends, too. They roomed together in USTA dorms, and got up to their share of hijinks. Especially Paul, who was known as the “Ferris Bueller” of the bunch. “That was his personality,” Opelka said. “He was the troublemaker.”
This group talked a lot about how they pushed each other to get better, and took inspiration from each other’s wins. But the team spirit didn’t translate to immediate success at the pro level. Each of them, it seemed, needed to professionalized: Paul to get more serious, Fritz to relish training as much as he relishes competition, Tiafoe to dial back on the junk food.
“He liked a lot of candy and chocolate and cookies,” Tiafoe’s former coach, Wayne Ferreira, said of their early days together. “Food intake was terrible at the beginning.”
By 2022, after a few false starts, they began to make good on their promise as pros. That year Fritz won the title at Indian Wells, and Tiafoe beat Rafael Nadal on his way to the semifinals at the US Open. The following January, Paul made the Australian Open semifinals and cracked the Top 20. They had finally caught up, or nearly caught up, to their old junior rivals from Europe and Canada.
“Zverev, Rublev, Tsitsipas, Auger-Aliassime, they went all-in on putting together professional teams, and they pulled away,” said Martin Blackman, player-development manager for the USTA. “Now we see the Americans investing in coaches and physios and personal teams in the same way.”
Two years later, Fritz, Paul and Tiafoe have entered the second half of their 20s, and are in roughly the same spot in the rankings. Their success wasn’t a fluke, and they weren’t one-season wonders; staying in the ATP’s Top 20 is an accomplishment in itself. At the same time, they haven’t continued to move up. Fritz hasn’t won another tournament as big as Indian Wells, and none of them has reached a Slam semi in the past year. Tiafoe split with Ferreira, and is finding his way with new coach Diego Moyano. Paul, the picture of the chill jock, can seem as if he’s happy to have made it as far as he has.
No one should blame him if he does. But as much as this U.S. generation has accomplished, standards are sky-high in this country, and sports fans here will always want more. Memories of McEnroe, Connors, Sampras, Agassi, and Courier—and the many Slam titles they brought home—are long. The major-title drought, now at 21 years, isn’t getting any shorter.
Fritz’s coach, Michael Russell, say his player recognizes that. “He wants to be Top 5,” Russell says. But learning what it takes it still a process. Russell says that he and Fritz put in a “good training block” to start the season, and the result was a win over Tsitsipas in Australia, and a tough four-set loss to Djokovic in the quarterfinals.
“I think the training he did helped him see that he could stay with Djokovic,” Russell said of Fritz. “It was a good indicator of what he needs to put in.”
The 2024 season will be an important one for this group of Americans, and so will this month’s swing through the familiar confines of California and Florida. Fritz, Paul and Tiafoe are all into the third round in Indian Wells, and all could face interesting contests this week. Tiafoe will play Tsitsipas on Sunday, Paul could play Novak Djokovic in the next round, and Fritz could face Holger Rune, a 20-year-old who has already passed him in the rankings.
This generation has made U.S. men’s tennis a force again. Will that be the extent of its legacy, or is the best yet to come? We’ll find out more starting this week.