Top-Ranked American Taylor Fritz Prevails At Wimbledon After Curfew Controversy

Top-ranked American Taylor Fritz overcame the biggest server in Wimbledon history – and a curfew controversy – to avoid a first-round upset and advance to the second round.

In a match that spanned two days, No. 5-seeded Fritz recorded his fourth career comeback from two sets down at a major to knock off huge-serving Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, 6-7(6), 6-7(8), 6-4, 7-6(6), 6-4. Fritz won despite trailing 1-5 in the fourth-set tiebreak. He finished with 29 aces against just 2 double faults.

Fritz was upset that the match was halted after the fourth set on Monday night due to the Wimbledon curfew because he felt they could have kept on playing and possibly finished the match. Instead, he said Mpetshi Perricard did not want to continue and the umpire suspended the match.

“Yeah, obviously it’s a really crazy match,” Fritz, the U.S. Open runner-up, said on court. “I thought it was about to be all over last night in the fourth-set tiebreaker but he came back on me in the first two tiebreakers so I thought maybe I had one in me, and I’m just super happy to get through it.”

Wimbledon is the only major with a curfew because of its contract with the village. The other majors are played in big cities — New York, Paris and Melbourne.

Of the curfew controversy, Fritz added: “It’s obviously not ideal. I felt like if we weren’t gonna have time to finish the fifth set, then absolutely I think it makes sense not to play the fifth set. But we’re having sets about as long as you could possibly play sets and they were still in the time frame that we had last night to play the fifth. I obviously wanted to play it, but either way I felt confident coming back and getting it done today as well.”

On Monday, Mpetshi Perricard broke Taylor Dent’s Wimbledon record for fastest serve ever with a 153-mph bomb. Fritz returned the body serve and ended up winning the point. Dent had been reigning since 2010 with his 148-mph record.

“Yeah, the funny thing I always tell my coaches, they always say I should try to serve body and I always tell them, I think body serves are awful, I never win the point when I do it,” Fritz said. “And I sent the video to my coach, there you go, he served the fastest serve in the history of Wimbledon right into my chest and I still won the point. So there’s your proof. Body serves are bad.”

Fritz came into Wimbledon having won grass court warm-up tournaments in Stuttgart and Eastbourne, and he knows the expectations for him are high.

“I was thinking about that in this match, it put a lot of pressure on me, because I really didn’t want to go out in the first round,” said Fritz, who next meets Canada’s Gabriel Diallo.

No American man has won Wimbledon since Pete Sampras in 2000, but John McEnroe believes the Americans are “closer than they’ve we’ve been in a while.”

“Congratulations to him,” McEnroe said on air of Fritz. “He’s as good a competitor as there is. He battles and he competes to the very end. Sometimes things can turn when it looks like you’re down and out. He gives everything he’s got.

“You gotta think he’s gonna get to the quarters.