Taylor Fritz credits girlfriend Morgan Riddle for helping achieve his goal of popularizing tennis in USA
Taylor Fritz was all praise for his girlfriend Morgan Riddle's impact on the growing popularity of tennis in the USA. Riddle has gained recognition for sharing fascinating, behind-the-scenes content from various tennis tournaments while accompanying Fritz on tour in support of his career.
Taylor Fritz is currently competing at the 2023 Miami Open, where he started his campaign strong with a dominant performance against compatriot Emilio Nava. The pair exchanged breaks early in the first set before Fritz converted a decisive break point at 5-4 to clinch the first set. The World No. 10 gained early inroads in the second set with two successive breaks and went on to win the match 6-4, 6-1.
During the post-match press conference, the American reiterated his desire to promote the growth and popularity of tennis in the USA.
"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," Fritz said.
Taylor Fritz went on to compliment his girlfriend Morgan Riddle for doing a great job of accomplishing this goal through the tennis-related content she continuously posts on YouTube and TikTok. He added that her "impressive" accomplishment had brought in a new demographic of fans to the sport.
"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," he stated. "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."
Taylor Fritz fancies his chances to win bigger tournaments owing to the Big 3's absence
Taylor Fritz also opened up about feeling more confident walking into tournaments in the absence of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the press conference.
"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," Fritz said.
He added that he was a lot more self-assured about his abilities and believed he had a fair chance of winning tournaments like everyone else.
"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," he added.
Taylor Fritz will next take on Denis Shapovalov in the third round of the 2023 Miami Open. Shapovalov currently leads 5-3 head-to-head; however, it was Fritz who came out on top during their most recent encounter at the 2023 Mexican Open, winning 6-4, 6-4 in straight sets.