Fritz warns, before his match with Mérida, about Cincinnati's main obstacle: "It's a wind that you don't know how much it's going to drift the ball"

Andrés Tomás Rico - 17 Aug 2026 | 01:20
ATP Taylor Fritz Dani Mérida ATP Cincinnati 2026

The American made his debut with a victory against his compatriot Michelsen in the Ohio tournament, but warns that “it's not a constant wind that you can adapt to.”

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Fritz warns of Cincinnati's main obstacle: "It's a wind that you don't know how much it's going to alter the ball." Photo: Getty Images

Taylor Fritz began his campaign in a Masters 1000 in Cincinnati, where he is a title contender, with a hard-fought victory against Alex Michelsen by 6-3, 6-4. However, the score did not reflect the equality of the match. And not only because of his compatriot's performance, but also due to a weather adversity that was not rain: the wind.

In the heat of Ohio, and the summer storms added to a wind that threatened to be another protagonist of the tournament. Fritz suffered from it, unable to hit his serve well, which made him very nervous at the beginning of the match. So much so that in the first game, after losing his serve, he smashed his racket on the ground a couple of times.

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Taylor Fritz explained the difficulty of adapting to the wind in Cincinnati

This was something he discussed in a courtside interview with TennisTV after the victory: "All the frustration came out in that first game. If I can't serve, my serve stops being one of my best weapons. When I come out in the first game from the side where the wind was helping me, the side where I clearly should hold serve, and I only hit one first serve, which gets returned with a winning shot, then I double fault and the rest of the points I have to play with second serves. Yes, it frustrated me a lot."

"Sometimes you just have to explode and let it out, and it helped me move on. I think if I had tried to contain it, maybe I wouldn't have turned it around so quickly," said Fritz, attributing his poor serving and frustration to the wind that was battering the Center Court.

"There was a lot of wind at times, and it wasn't a constant wind that you could adapt to. They're gusts, so sometimes you didn't know how much it would knock the ball off course. Sometimes I barely hit it and it would go out, I hit it hard and it wouldn't go the same way. It was really complicated to serve. I think that was reflected in the serving statistics for both of us during the first set," pointed out the world number ten.

"Towards the end of the match, the conditions were much more manageable, which was positive because, once I got that break in the second set, I really wanted the wind to die down so I could just focus on holding my serve. But yes, it was a very complicated match," he added.

But what definitely accompanied him throughout the match and was key to pulling through was patience and confidence in his tennis: "I felt that as the match progressed, even with how difficult the conditions were, I was hitting the ball really well. I had confidence in many of my shots. There were many points at 30-30, 15-30, and complicated situations, and I felt I played those points very aggressively and with a lot of confidence," concluded a Taylor Fritz who had to sweat in his debut, while his next opponent, Dani Mérida, also hopes to present him with challenges. 
 

This is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, Fritz avisa, antes de su duelo con Mérida, del principal obstáculo de Cincinnati: "Es un viento que no sabes cuanto te va a desviar la pelota"