Sinner vs Fritz: US Open Final Recap

hunting for forehands — locked-wrist backhands — return positions — angles

World number one Jannik Sinner defeated home favourite Taylor Fritz 6/3 6/4 7/5 in the final of the US Open on Sunday to claim his second grand slam of the season and cement his position atop the men’s rankings. The finals run also pushes Fritz back into the top-eight as the race to Turin heats up.

Opening Games

Fritz and Sinner play a similar brand of aggressive baseline tennis. Both are natural ball-strikers who welcome pace, but the Italian is a class above when it comes to movement. Such an edge reveals itself not just on defence, but also on offence. It was on full display in this match, where Sinner looked far more comfortable on defence, but also when attacking with his forehand from the ad-court.

“The serve and the movement. Massive improvements. [In 2021] I could find myself in a lot of return games just off of his first serve. I felt I could get myself in points off his first serve every time. And back then, it was much easier to hurt him from the ground as well. He’s much faster, a lot better out of the corners.”

- Fritz on Sinner’s improvements since their first match in 2021

With respect to hunting ad-court forehands (or a lack thereof for Fritz) part of this may be explained by Fritz’s world-class backhand jab, tailor-made for quick hard courts that make him adept at handling and redirecting pace. It’s the kind of pattern the American makes his living on.

Backhand line, especially if you can hit it as flat as Fritz, is a great play against Sinner, as it rushes the Italian’s forehand and keeps it low. It was also a tactically important shot for Fritz, as it helped him find more forehands. Here he earns a middle forehand that he unloads on and forces an error out of Sinner.

Good enough for a handsome living, but not enough for slam success, given his style is primarily built on offence, rather than suffocating defensive efforts. Movement is an area of the game he and his coach, Michael Russell, have worked diligently to improve — and he has improved — but there is still daylight between he and his Dolomite-bred opponent. His lack of a quick left-step hurt him today, seen here punching this middle ball wide with his backhand, instead of finding another forehand.

The initial crosscourt forehand from Fritz rushed Sinner into a weak reply, but the follow up should have been another forehand. One big step would have done it.

I have always been bullish on Fritz in terms of his strokes. The serve is big, but not huge, for 6’5’’, the backhand is incredibly quiet mechanically, and the forehand is textbook modern, with a Musetti-Western grip making him favour higher balls on that wing, but still very adept at higher speeds and when pushed wide. It makes sense that he has enjoyed Indian Wells and the US Open with their higher bounce.

Upright racquet head, lower elbow. The extreme grip suits hitting shoulder high balls like this one. Fritz, like most younger players these days, uses a pretty light frame: reported strung specs ~320grams, 33cm balance, 330 SW

Although Sinner broke immediately to open the final, Fritz broke back in the 2-1 game with a flurry of points that were exactly the kind he needed to play if he was to have a chance: attacking the Sinner forehand — twice on backhand second-serve returns, where Sinner’s body-serve misfired — and keeping Sinner pinned low and wide in the backhand corner when in neutral trades. The American’s locked-wrist follow-through is a feature that allows him to change direction and handle pace more easily at high speeds on the backhand.

Note the high right elbow finish as Fritz tries to direct this ball down the line. Sacrifices spin for timing. “Air the armpits” was coined by Vic Braden way back.

Fritz held for a 3-2 lead, saving a break point on a 24-shot rally with a blistering 101mph forehand that finally made Sinner misfire his own forehand. That final phase of play was the right tactic, but a review of the whole point on the changeover revealed (to me at least) that Fritz had won the battle, but was losing the war; you can’t beat this version of Sinner with a backhand crosscourt. You need to attack his forehand, ideally with your own.

Sinner found 6 forehands from the ad-court trades to Fritz’s 1 in this rally.

To Fritz’s credit he did often look to be torching his forehand — and into Sinner’s own forehand no less — when he was set, but it’s hard to get set often against someone of Sinner’s aggression, and redlining your game is always a gamble; using angles may have proved more effective, as we will show later. As a result, Fritz’s lead was brief. Sinner ran away with the first set, winning 15 of the last 19 points through a combination of Fritz’s misfired aggression, and lack of end-range speed and balance.

“I definitely didn’t hit the ball as well as I expected to, and that’s big if I want to go back and forth and ball-strike with him, because he’s such an amazing ball-striker…He’s the best player in the world right now. If my plan A isn’t working, the plan B I fall back on would normally be bringing everything in, playing a bit safer, grinding it out, and you know, that works — along with my serve — against a lot of other players, but against him, when I tried to bring it down, not be as aggressive, then he’s just gonna bully me too much. So it was tough that my plan A wasn’t really working for me until the third set when I kind of got it going.”

— Fritz post-match

Fritz would finish with 28 unforced errors, versus just 14 from Sinner. When you consider the aggression of the Italian, that is a scary set of numbers. Here’s a look at how Sinner’s movement is used on a plus-one ball early in the second set; why hit backhands when you can just backpedal to the alley and lasso-whip this forehand down the line?

Rafa would be proud. That’s actually a pretty sweet return too.

In the second set Fritz’s serve caught fire, landing 78% and earning plenty of unreturned balls and plus-one slop that allowed him to breeze through his first few service games in circa 1-minute each. However, at 3-4 40-0, Sinner dropped back — as he did midway through the Australian Open final against Medvedev — and gave Fritz a different look:

Sinner has the athleticism and swings to be a threat from the deep.

“That’s a smart move from Jannik Sinner. When someone’s not missing serves, if you change your return of serve position, offer them a different view, sometimes they might press and try and hit a different type of serve.”

— Jim Courier

Or they might then be capable of hitting a different return. Ask Nadal, Medvedev, Thiem, Alcaraz, Wawrinka, etcetera. Having the ability to drop back and play from the mural of Wall St. sponsors not only throws a spanner in the works of your opponent, it gives big hitters the time they need to hit big.

With Fritz serving to stay in the set at 4-5 Sinner again opted to return each point from Medvedev territory, jagging back more serves and settling into a higher, heavier, more patient cadence that ultimately sealed him the second set as Fritz tightened up and again made costly errors. A combination of heavyweight technique and Ferrari-esque court speed enables Sinner to play effectively from deep positions — offence and defence equally — and it afforded him tactical flexibility here that was crucial to disrupting the rhythm of Fritz.

On the other hand, this was also an effective tactic because Fritz is somewhat allergic, or at least net-intolerant, and doesn’t have the toolset to do what an Alcaraz, or Nadal, or Djokovic, might do when a player drops back like that: serve and volley. Fritz is tactically stiff.

Sinner knows Fritz won’t serve and volley. It means you can hit your return ten feet over the net near the middle, and recover nearly to centre before Fritz hits his plus-one ball. This has got to be an area Fritz focuses on if he wants to win slams.

Third Set

Fritz by his own admission played his best stuff in the third set. Jim Courier on the comms was highlighting how Fritz was the flatter, more linear player of the two, but that he would be well-served in opening up the court with more angles; a sentiment I completely agree with, and one that Alcaraz used to good effect in his Indian Wells victory over Sinner this year (NB: moving forward caters to this tactic also).

Breaking the sideline means hitting your ball with less speed and depth, but more spin, to create an angle that forces your opponent to cover a greater distance, especially if they stand deep. Tsitsipas is another player who does a great job breaking the forehand sideline with his forehand. Alcaraz does it better than anyone with the volley.

Again, note the two common themes in successful Fritz plays: rushing the forehand on return (often with his flat backhand); finding his forehand into the wide Sinner forehand (and from the ad court below); but now, using more angles to break the sidelines:

Karue Sell of MTHQ recently preached as much:

A feature of Sinner’s game the past 12 months has also been his ability to open the court with angles and move forward in service to this tactic. His win over Medvedev in Vienna last year was a good example.

(1) Note how Sinner’s backhand lands in the service box, enabling it to push Fritz wide of the double alley; (2) That first wide ball that Fritz slices, you just know a Djokovic/Sinner/Alcaraz are playing an open-stance sliding passing shot there, not a defensive slice; (3) Note how Sinner plays the volley shorter and more angled, ensuring Fritz — or any other player — wouldn’t get a look at a second passing shot. We will see how Fritz lacks that tool and vision in the following gif.

You can see the discomfort in Fritz’s volleying. Floating this volley deep, while well-placed in this instance, gives your opponent a chance to get to that next ball. That wouldn’t be possible if he played it shorter and more angled.

Tactic is good. Execution could be better.

Sinner’s first serve also dropped off in the third set (40%) as Fritz’s baseline level rose, the American earning a break on a Sinner double fault and eventually the chance to serve out the third set at 5-4 30-30 , the celeb-drenched NYC crowd willing him for more tennis. But Fritz got tentative on a forehand, spinning it short down the middle. It was all Sinner needed, who these days is better than anyone at hunting for forehands and making you pay no matter the stakes. As soon as Fritz was on Wall St. hitting groundstrokes, the odds were overwhelming in Sinner’s favour.

There are those ad-court forehands again. I feel Sinner has been using inside-in forehands more than down-the-line backhands in recent matches to attack his opponents’ running forehands; something that Gill Gross also perceived from his extensive US Open coverage.

On the break point Fritz was pulled forward and missed a very make-able reaction volley to further display the gulf in intangibles between he and the top brass of Sinner/Alcaraz/Djokovic (Medvedev, to be frank, sucks at volleys). Sinner promptly held to force Fritz to serve and stay in the match.

Perhaps the fatigue of Fritz’s five-set semifinal win over Tiafoe was starting to bleed into the legs, or nerves again buckled his resolve, as he found himself playing pedestrian shots though the middle-backhand corridor, again enabling Sinner to rock forehands both ways from the ad side:

You can see how small and slow Fritz’s recovery crossover step from his forehand is. Clear sign of fatigue. The step should be large and quick to cover the court more efficiently.

Sinner converted on his first Championship point, raising his hands in subdued fashion and looking skyward; relief more than rapture, perhaps. It is no secret he has worn the weight of the world number 1 tag, but also the tag of ‘doper’ in light of recent news.

I don’t have time right now, nor is it within the scope of this particular recap, to delve into the specifics and my own thoughts on that matter, but I do intend to write a piece in-depth on this case and the broader landscape of this issue in the off-season.

All I can say now is that Sinner is playing the best ball out of everyone on hard courts, and the results show that. I also wonder if the roof on Ashe – which by all reports significantly reduces the wind that used to swirl inside the stadium — makes conditions more indoor-like. If that is true, it’s very possible that the US Open will be Sinner’s favourite hunting ground. Out of the 20 tour finals he has made, 7 of them have been on indoor hard courts specifically.

Playing on Ashe isn’t quite the outdoor slam that outer courts are.

A look at this pretty average rap sheet (I thought the US was meant to be good with sports stats; this is low-effort. Tennis needs to help inform spectators why players are winning. Forced errors, unreturned serves, spin rates, directions, etc... The data is there):

But that is a rant for another day. For now, I sign off with ‘Forza’, as I have done so often after hardcourt titles in the past 12 months. See you in the comments. HC.