By Toby Davis
LONDON (Reuters) -For a brief moment it looked like Taylor Fritz’s Independence Day celebrations could be ruined but some final-set fireworks propelled the American into the last 16 at Wimbledon with a 6-4 6-3 6-7(5) 6-1 win over Alejandro Davidovich Fokina on Friday.
It had all looked to be going so well for the world number five, who had been taken to five sets in his last two encounters but raced into a two-set lead against Spain’s Davidovich Fokina on a sunny Centre Court.
He was a break up in the third and serving for the match when his normally reliable delivery spluttered as the 27th-ranked Spaniard finally converted a break point and then forced a tiebreak which he won in a tense tussle.
With his tail up, it felt like momentum had switched, but Fritz, whose languid manner never gives up a hint of frustration, swiftly rediscovered his form and turned the tide, breaking three times in the final set to wrap up victory.
Bidding to become the first American men’s Grand Slam winner since Andy Roddick in 2003, Fritz has shown that if stamina alone determined the Wimbledon champion, he would be hard to beat.
His Wimbledon campaign began on the back of winning his fourth Eastbourne title on Saturday.
Then his first match at the All England Club on Monday was carried over into Tuesday, and his second-round tie on Wednesday was heading the same way before he finished off Gabriel Diallo to earn a well-deserved rest day.
While there was almost certainly a part of him that was grateful for not being dragged the distance for a third match in a row, the 27-year-old American said he was feeling great ahead of a fourth-round meeting with Australia’s Jordan Thompson.
“This is going to sound crazy but my body is actually feeling better after each match,” he said. “I feel like somehow it felt the worst after my first round but now it’s getting better.”
The first three games on Friday were gritty and attritional and lasted 17 minutes, suggesting Fritz was already digging trenches for another lengthy battle.
But then the whole feel of the match changed as Davidovich Fokina struggled to create any sort of pressure on Fritz’s serve and the American rode an early break to take the first set and immediately got his nose in front in the second.
After two marathon encounters it looked like Fritz was going to sprint to the finish line, but out of nowhere the 26-year-old Spaniard finally found a way to upset the American’s serve.
Trailing 5-4, he conjured two break points and while the first got away – the seventh he had spurned in the match – Davidovich Fokina pressured Fritz into dumping a backhand into the net to hand the 26th seed a lifeline.
He took the tiebreak when Fritz netted another backhand under pressure, roaring and fist-pumping to polite applause from a crowd who were perhaps inclined to see this match wrapped up quickly with Carlos Alcaraz and home favourite Emma Raducanu still to come on the Centre Court schedule.
If that was their wish it was granted as the comeback that had flickered into life was snuffed out almost immediately with Fritz racing through the fourth set and finishing it off when the Spaniard whipped a forehand long.
(Reporting by Toby Davis; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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