T. FRITZ/E. Nava
6-4, 6-1
THE MODERATOR: Taylor, how did it feel to play out there in front of your home crowd?
TAYLOR FRITZ: It felt pretty good. I thought maybe the first game wasn't ideal, double faulting twice and then getting broken. But after that I kind of just felt like I played well. Especially in the second set. Relaxed and, you know, thought I played a solid first match.
Q. Taylor, just that venue, obviously it's an early round, but obviously as the tournament goes that can become a pretty big stage. First of all, what is it like playing in that? It's obviously a pretty unique arena there.
TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, it's cool to be, I guess, a stadium within a stadium in a football field. It's cool in that one side that they're using as the actual football part. Yeah, it can be pretty exciting, I guess, when it fills up. There's a lot of room for people, and hopefully later in the week I can get to experience that.
Q. Just bigger picture, I wanted to ask, it's obviously hard not to look at the draw and notice no Nadal, obviously Federer retired, no Djokovic. Everyone in that top 12, 14, it's 25, 26, even younger. This moment in the sport, just how exciting is it to be part of this? It feels like, obviously, Novak and Rafa are still around, but a potential kind of changing of the guard, new generation?
TAYLOR FRITZ: Yeah, I've been saying it for a while now. It's very exciting because you are going into these tournaments feeling like anyone can win. There's, like, you know, I would say, 10, 15 guys. It's whoever is playing the best on that week. Like, it could be their week, and I think that's really exciting.
It's changed a lot for me over the last, like, year and a half or so because I always wanted to win tournaments, and I felt like a lot of the times it was highly unlikely that that was going to happen with a lot of these guys in the draws and with how, you know, unbeatable they were.
So it's great to kind of feel like I can come into these tournaments and feel like I have just as good of a chance as anybody else to win it.
Q. What advice would you have for Emilio Nava, a young American, another California kid, who is trying to make his breakthrough on the tour?
TAYLOR FRITZ: I mean, I think what he is doing is obviously good. He is on the right path.
I think that he should just play his game more. In these type of matches I feel like he maybe felt like he had to play much higher than his capacity in this match. Just the way he was just kind of going for winners off everything in the first set. It was working, but it's tough to sustain.
But I think his baseline level is probably very good, and that's something that I did as well when I was a kid. I remember the first time I played -- different comparison, but my first time I played Nadal I tried to overplay and hit crazy shots. I guess just keep working hard and raise your average level.
Q. What your girlfriend Morgan is doing on TikTok and YouTube has brought a lot of casual fans, people that I know don't even watch tennis, and now they're coming to watch because of what she's doing across with her content. Was that something that you two envisioned her behind the scenes look at tennis and life on the tour?
TAYLOR FRITZ: For sure. It's always been one of my goals to just see tennis grow and make tennis more popular outside of the casual tennis fan. I wanted tennis to become a more well-known and talked about sport in the U.S.
And she's always known that that's been one of my goals, and she's kind of done a really good job of finding this niche of content and, I guess, trying to popularize tennis.
It's been really great. Impressive as well with what she's been able to do and generate a lot of hype for tennis. You know, reach people that, I guess, tennis normally wouldn't reach.
Q. Do you think that's a common goal for a lot of the guys from your generation? I know Francis is obviously big about the same kind of stuff. Just that you guys want to spread this as kind of a group?
TAYLOR FRITZ: I think in our generation it's much more of a thing. I think that maybe the older generation, they just played, and it was what it was. I don't think they really cared too much about, I guess, the popularity of it.
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong to just want to play tennis and just have your own life and do what you do.
But I think this group, like me, Francis, Tommy, I do think that we care about growing the sport outside of tennis, getting more fans into the sport, just seeing it, I don't know, reach popularity in the U.S. like some of the other sports that we have.
Q. At this stage in your career now you're a top 5 player. Do you find yourself ever trying to tweak your --
TAYLOR FRITZ: Not anymore. Technically speaking, yeah.
Q. Do you find yourself ever kind of tinkering or tweaking your equipment or gear in any way? Obviously you're using a new Radical that just came out, but do you find yourself testing strings or changes within your racket or anything?
TAYLOR FRITZ: No, I really try not to change too many things. I feel like -- I mean, it works for some people. Tommy just fully switched rackets this year, and he is playing well. So it does work, but in the past when I've tinkered with things even just the littlest bit, I haven't liked it.
So I'm pretty just stuck with what I have, to be honest. I don't like to change it, and I also don't like to, I guess, like, blame the gear or whatever I'm doing. I just assume that it's user error. I've always just stuck with what I have.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports