Fritz’s knee holds up as he reaches Wimbledon third round

Taylor Fritz said the knee tendon that unravelled his 2025 season is finally holding up, the American’s clearest sign of relief after reaching the Wimbledon third round on Thursday.

The world No. 7 beat compatriot Patrick Kypson 6-2, 6-2, 7-5, a win built on two comfortable sets before the third tightened. Fritz, the No. 6 seed and a semi-finalist here last year, has spent months managing a tendon problem so severe that scans after the 2025 ATP Finals showed what he described as structural damage.

The reassurance, he said, is that the joint no longer intrudes on his tennis. “It feels great to be able to play three-set matches, four-set matches,” Fritz said, pointing to a punishing recent run on grass. “Nine matches in 11 days, most of them three sets, and not ever be thinking about my knee in pain on the court. That’s a huge step forward.”

I thought the grass was going to be harder on it.

“I thought the grass was going to be harder on it,” Fritz added. “It’s held up so well.” The hard-court test, when he is “stomping and sliding,” is still to come, and he noted the knee stiffens once he has cooled down rather than during play.

Fritz admitted the decision that got him here went against his instincts. A spring shutdown to let the tendon heal was, he conceded, one he resisted. “I’m super stubborn. I still think I could have played the clay-court season,” he mentionned, rehabbing on the road. The scans told a more complicated story than the pain did.

The match itself was a scrappier watch than the scoreline suggests. Fritz was jumpy early in gusting wind. “It was super windy in the beginning. I felt a little nervy,” he said, before settling and rating his serving highly bar one game.

The third set nearly slipped. “You get those sets sometimes where they steal it from you in a breaker,” Fritz said, wary of a fourth. He broke at the last to close it out.

The result sustains a bid that carries national weight, with no American man having won a Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick in 2003. Fritz, a US Open finalist in 2024, plays down the drought but not the ambition.