Taylor Fritz takes out Stefanos Tsitsipas in Monte Carlo for milestone 200th win of career
The 25-year-old Californian is the first American to reach the semifinals of Monte Carlo since Vince Spadea in 2003.
It was a double milestone kind of day for Taylor Fritz in Monte Carlo on Friday—not only was his 6-2, 6-4 quarterfinal victory over two-time defending champion Stefanos Tsitsipas the 200th win of his career, but he’s the first American to reach the semifinals in Monaco in 20 years.
The last American to reach the final four was Vince Spadea in 2003.
Fritz stormed out of the blocks against Tsitsipas, building a 4-0, double-break lead in just 17 minutes, after which the two players traded holds until the American had the 29-minute first set in his pocket.
The holding pattern continued for the next six games until 3-all in the second set, when Fritz broke again to go up 4-3—Tsitsipas broke right back to tie things up to 4-all, but Fritz broke again for a 5-4 lead and served the one-hour, 10-minute match out at love.
He finished it off with a 121mph ace up the T.
“I thought my level today was really high. I thought I played a very good match,” said Fritz, who finished the match with 17 winners to 15 unforced errors, and who converted four of five break point opportunities.
“I seemed to play well on the big points. I kind of just took my chances—I knew that if I played too safe, then he was going to be able to get around and dictate with the forehand. So even in the pressure moments I kind of just stuck to my strategy of pulling the trigger, and trying to not let him get those forehands to dictate on.”
Fritz, who was born in 1997, is the first American man born in the last 35 years to record 200 career wins—the most recently-born American man to reach that number is Sam Querrey, who was born in 1987 (Querrey amassed 385 career wins before retiring at last year's US Open).
Awaiting Fritz in the semifinals will be Andrey Rublev, who ended the run of German qualifier Jan-Lennard Struff earlier in the day, 6-1, 7-6 (5).
Fritz leads Rublev in their head-to-head, 4-2, and he's won their last three meetings, but the two have never played each other on clay.
The last American man to reach the final at the Rolex Monte Carlo Masters was Aaron Kricksten in 1992, five years before Fritz was born.