Both players are one win away from another historic feat: The last American man who played for a Grand Slam title was Andy Roddick in the 2009 Wimbledon final, with Roddick also the last to reach the championship stage at the US Open, too.
Fritz is taking a 6-1 head-to-head lead into the biggest match of his career, against his longtime friend dating back to junior days, at his home Grand Slam. But after getting past the quarterfinal slump, the US Open’s unofficial poster boy is eager to keep winning big.
“A question I got asked pretty much every time I lost in my quarterfinals was, what’s it going to take to go further? And the answer I gave was always, just to keep putting myself in these situations, and I’ll become more comfortable in these situations and get better,” Fritz told press after his win over Zverev.
“That’s definitely what happened now. The quarterfinals didn’t feel like, I don’t know, this big thing to me like it has been in the past. It just felt like another tournament.”
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